The Final Crusade
by Matt Coates
Summary: [Sequel to Reborn Warriors] The Imperium has survived the horrors of the 13th Crusade intact, if badly damaged. But now the hated Abaddon had unleashed Chaos twisted copies of ancient weapons of War. Once again, the Imperium must rely on two warriors of a
1. Prologue

Evangelion and any associated characters are the property of GAINAX.

Warhammer 40,000 and any associated characters are the property of Games Workshop.

**The Final Crusade**

**Prologue**

"WARP DAMN THE LOT OF YOU! YOUR WEAKNESS HAS COST ME AND THE CHAOS GODS THE ENTIRE CRUSADE!" Abaddon screamed in anger. Not one of the multitude of commanders, Lords or Lieutenants from any of the Traitor Legions dared even twitch as Abaddon's anger rolled off of him like a flood, each of them fearing to bring the full wrath of the Despoiler down upon himself. Time seemed to slow as Abaddon let his gaze drift across the faces of each and every one of them.

"Begone," he snarled finally sagging back to his throne. "And when the Chaos gods ask who it was that cost them their due, I will tell them of you." The various commanders left quickly, no doubt thanking the Warp Powers for their survival.

Abbadon waited a moment in silence, as his throne room echoed with the fading footsteps of his subordinates… before chuckling to himself quietly. A faint shift in the air caused him to look up as a tapestry shifted aside, revealing the shape of the sorcerer Zaraphiston.

"What did you think of my performance?" Abaddon asked, coming to his feet. Zaraphiston cocked his head in surprise.

"Performance, my Lord? But the 13th Crusade failed!" Zaraphiston stopped in shock as he remembered just how fatal criticizing Abaddon could be. Fortunately, Abaddon merely chuckled again.

"I've no doubt that that is what our 'friends' out there fear and the Imperial scum hopes, but all evidence to the contrary, the 13th Crusade was never intended to defeat the Imperium. The Cadian sector has been drained dry and despite the damage to the Blackstone and the Planet Killer, virtually all of our true strength remains untouched."

"I see, my Lord."

"On that subject… How is our new force coming along?" Abaddon asked as he strode into the elevator behind the tapestry, his bodyguard and Zaraphiston falling in behind him.

"Very well now my Lord," Zaraphiston said happily as the lift began to desend into the base. "We've finally cracked the last obstacle to their construction. Using the same techniques as in the Defilers, we can provide them with a suitably minded…power source. And the servitor technology combined with the sample we retrieved has allowed us to join the last connections."

"And numbers?" Abaddon asked as the lift groaned to a halt.

"We'll have a dozen ready for deployment in about a month," Zaraphiston replied as they strode out onto the hidden manaufactorium level. It had changed since Abaddon had last seen it, over a century ago. Now oversized harnesses lined the walls, with gantries twisting over and around them in ways that did not seem quite physically possible. Many of the harnesses were empty, but twelve of them held dimly lit humanoid forms, immense and well armored. "More will be available as we start diverting more slave-gangs to them."

"As I said," Abaddon stated grinning bloodlessly, "the Galaxy shall burn."

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Few people, even the High Lords of Terra, know much about the Adeptus Cusdodes. The personal bodyguards of the God-Emperor of Mankind, they take no orders but those from their own captains and the Emperor himself, who has remained silent for the last ten thousand years.

At the same time, not one of the Cusdodes marines would disobey an order from the right source. Even a set of orders that had been sealed ten thousand years ago.

As such, at the orders of a long dead Cusdodes commander, carefully timed astropathic messages were being transmitted across the Imperium under the command of the present day Adeptus Cusdodes.

A ten thousand year old game was finally being bought into its closing stages.

To be continued...


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

_Two years previously…_

-MY LORD, A MESSAGE JUST CAME IN FOR YOU FROM THE ASTROPATHIC CHOIR- High Tech Magi Orgenati, Planetary Governor of the Forge world Rorgatein IV, looked up from the latest production reports as his heavily modified servitor-secretary X067-TNY entered his office, clutching a data-slate in it's left claw.

CAN YOU GIVE ME A SUMMARY+ Orgenati asked, leaning back in his chair watching as X067-TNY slowly pondered his question. The servitor was a very high level model, virtually sentient and capable of handling a very high level of mental work compared to most servitors.

-I'M AFRAID NOT MY LORD. THE MESSAGE IN QUESTION IS ENCRYPTED UNDER LEVEL ALPHA-1 ENCRYPTION. MY MEMORY BANKS CONTAIN NO OTHER SUCH INCIDENT. HENCE I CAN NOT PREDICT THE CONTENTS- The statement was enough to bring Orgenati's thoughts on his secretary screeching to a halt.

BUT+ he murmured to himself, mechendrites shivering in shock+THAT'S HIGH LORD AUTHORISATION! THERE IS NONE HIGHER. WHAT COULD THEY WANT+ Orgenati quickly snatched the data-slate from X067-TNY and quickly scanned over the screen.

---

Date: _3 563 996 M41_

Author: _Classified level Alpha-1_

Recipitant: _Planetary Governery, Forge world Rorgatein IV_

Transmitted: _Terra, Classified level Alpha-1_

Transmitter: _Classified level Alpha-1_

Thought for the day: _Treachery is rewarded with death._

---

_The information contained within this message is classified at level Alpha-1 and is intended for the eyes of the Planetary Governor of Rorgatein IV only._

_Unauthorized access or dissemination of the information within this message carries the death penalty._

_Access via direct Neural feed only._

_Insert organic appendage for gene-analysis and input code ref-562beta._

_Praise be to the Holy God-Emperor of Terra._

---

Orgenati stared at the message in shocked silence for a full 3.7 seconds, before turning his gaze back up to the silently waiting servitor.

LEAVE+ he said bluntly, waiting for X067-TNY to leave the room before turning his attention back to the data slate. He carefully put his right index finger, which he had kept organic for just this purpose, into the indented hollow on the slate while simultaneously inputting the relevant code. The slate chattered to himself, comparing DNA, lifesigns and data streams, before coming to a conclusion.

---

_I.D. confirmed. Connect a Neural feed and prepare for data download._

_Let His will guide us._

---

Orgenati hesitated as he stared at the screen, before letting his gaze drift over to the I/O ports on the side of the slate. Stories of the High Lords tended to vary, but the legend that was occupying Orgenati's mind at the moment was that of the tendency of the High Lords to have their messages laced with kill-systems and viral-programs designed to destroy the soul of any mind which didn't have all of the necessary command passwords, many of which were stored in the subconscious and inaccessible to the waking mind.

Orgenati shock himself, before bringing a mechendrite up to the data-slate, extending several data cables. The systems meshed, and the stored message flowed out into Orgenati's mind.

There was silence for a few minutes. Then the mechendrite extracted itself from the slate, which Orgenati carefully laid back down on the table.

WHAT IN THE NAME OF THE MACHINE GOD…+ Orgenati mused to himself for a few seconds, ignoring the data-slate whine as it lobotomized it's own systems, before tapping the intercom switch on his desk. +TONY, SENT OUT A GENERAL SUMMON. I WANT ALL SECTION CHIEFS TO REPORT TO MY OFFICE IN ONE STANDARD HOUR FROM NOW. WE HAVE WORK TO DO+

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_Present day_

_The edge of the Agrapinna System, Cadian Sector_

Right on the edge of the Agrapinna System, a system that had seen some of the worst fighting outside Cadia itself (although Agrapinna and the other worlds of the system remained in Imperial hands, many of the surrounding systems had fallen) space began to boil. Oddly colored light, somehow not quite matching any color in the spectrum, outlined a growing, rippling distortion in space.

With a massive burst of Warp energy, a large body of metal ripped it's way into existence, small daemons peeling from it's sides and dissolving with frustrated screams.

For a while, the derelict hung silent in space, only the occasional flicker of energy from exposed power systems of burst of air from a ruptured corridor marking it out as anything but a dead hulk.

Then, what light reached the derelict from the system's distant Primary was blotted out as a _Dauntless_-Class Light Cruiser of the Imperial Navy pulled up alongside.

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"Do we have any new information?" Captain Jaroin asked, glancing down at the lower bridge deck.

"No Sir," an ensign replied, "It's energy readings have increased slightly, but otherwise it seems dead, no active scans or signals of any kind." Jaroin frowned, before shrugging slightly.

"All right then. Helm, come to a Full Stop and turn 90 degrees to port. Karmien, send a message down to the main hanger, I want three shuttles loaded with storm-troopers for a boarding action. Gunnary Officer, arm our starboard weapons and take aim at the _Sol's Fury_. Any form of offensive action, and open fire immediately." Jaroin turned back to the main screen as his subordinates scattered to do his biding, letting his gaze shift to the derelict coming into view. He couldn't help wonder whether this event would benefit or harm the Imperium.

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Major Layson let his gaze drift around temporary command post near the hanger deck again. Everything seemed… slightly off was the only way he could think of it.

As per S.O.P. the storm-troopers had moved to secure the command deck and engineering. In fact, it turned out that the command deck had been literally torn from the ship's hull by the forces the Sol's Fury had gone through, and many decks, including main engineering had been opened to space.

And as they had moved through the ship, all his sergeants and lieutenants had reported some disturbing facts. The ship's crew was, as expected, mostly dead. Vacuum exposure, shrapnel wounds from exploded machinery and many who had died from other, less pleasant causes. Some had been found alive, which had been surprising (casualties from warp exposure tended to be 100 unless the ship had been exposed for only a few minutes). Most of the survivors had been either insane or showing early signs of daemonic possession, and hence had received the Emperor's mercy (a shotgun round to the head).

Otherwise, the ship seemed mostly normal. Except for the complete lack of Ecclesiarchy shrines or preachers of the Emperor's Word. It was disturbing; the ship was obviously one of the old _Cyclops _class cargo carriers, which had been gradually replaced with the newer _Triton_ class, with a better cargo compartment layout. Yet even the oldest _Cyclops _had shrines and preachers, especially in this day and age. Yet this ship, which could only have been in the warp for a few minutes for there to be survivors did n…

"Sir", his comm. officer said, interrupting Layson's train of thought. "There's a report from the team investigating cargo-hold Beta. They say they've got a couple of live ones."

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Captain Jaroin studied the drifting wreck next to _Hammerhead_ as he considered the report from Major Layson.

"What are your orders Sir?" Commander Karmien asked quetly.

"Hmm…" Jaroin hummed to himself for a few seconds. "I'm inclined to simply pull out our men and have the ship and it's crew destroyed."

"What about the ship's cargo," Karmien asked, his voice clearly indicating one who's playing devil's advocate. "The Cult of Mars would likely want to examine the strange Titans and their pilots that this ship was carrying."

"I know, Tech Magi Vorlensti was twisting my ear about them as soon as the report came in. Even so, they don't match anything in our arsenal, and regardless of what it looks like, without Ecclesiarchy shrines or priests, the _Sol's Fury_ is not a vessel of the Imperium. At this stage, the Imperium does not need a new disturbance not so soon after the end of the war."

"Understood S…"

"Excuse me Captain." Jaroin looked up at the interrupting ensign in annoyance, who quickly stepped back. "My apologies Sir, but we just got in a high priority message. It's… well…" The Ensign shrugged apologetically, before holding out a data-slate. Jaroin snatched the data slate and glanced at the screen. The blood red words 'Classified level Alpha-1' met his eyes.

"I believe I shall view this in my quarters," Jaroin murmured quietly. "Take no action until I return."

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Karmien looked up as Captain Jaroin reentered the bridge, and found himself shocked at Jaroin's shell-shocked appearance. Jaroin walked stiffly to the center of the bridge and stood stock-still for a few seconds, before giving himself a shake.

"Send a message to Major Layson. He is to bring the survivors from the _Sol's Fury _back and have them secured under close guard. Then have the ship's cargo secured in our own storage spaces, dumping as much supplies as necessary to make room. Meanwhile, inform the Navigator to prepare for a Warp jump to the Imperium's base on Nemisis Tessara in the Nemisis system."

Karmien felt himself gape in shock for several seconds, before deciding to try to deal with the simplest problem. "But Sir, we have no fleet base in the Nemisis system."

Jaroin smiled cheerlessly. "I never said it was a fleet base," he replied.

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Shinji sat quietly, huddled up between an freighted ensign and a silent Tech priest as the assault shuttle disengaged from the ruined _Sol's Fury_. Although the shuttle and it's men were defiantly part of the Imperium, the stormtroopers were regarding them with barely disguised hostility and baffled respect.

Shinji let his eyes rise to meet Asuka's, a characteristic scowl covering her face and an uncharacteristic glint of fear in her eyes. He gave a timid smile, which Asuka returned with a half-hearted grimace of her own.

_If nothing else_, Shinji thought as the shuttle accelerated, _we're together. Perhaps they'll let us send a message to Fabricator General Kane, or someone else back at the Imperial palace to confirm who we are._

To be continued…

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Cadia; Often described as the Cadian Gate, the Cadia System lies directly in the path of the sole stable route in and out of the Eye of Terror. As such, it is a heavily armed Fortress world, with several million Guardsmen constantly stationed against a Chaos incursion.

Despite this, during the 13th Crusade the world was virtually gutted before the Chaos forces were driven back and anarchy still roams across it's surface.

Zaraphiston; One of Abaddon's closest servants, Zaraphiston is a Sorcerer-engineer accredited with the development of many weapons, most noticeably the Defiler.

Blackstone Fortress; Discovered by the Imperium, these mysterious, abandoned space stations proved to be highly useful staging points for Imperial forces. Indeed, until the Gothic war, the Blackstone Fortresses had never fallen to a foe.

Abaddon, however, knew of the true nature of the Blackstone Fortresses (or Talismans of Vaul according to the Eldar), and put that knowledge to good use. During the Gothic War, Abbadon successfully captured at least one of the Fortresses and destroyed the others.

During the 13th Crusade, a Blackstone Fortress was unleashed on Cadia, wrecking the immense Fortress of Kasr Partox and vaporizing an entire army. During and after the battle, an allied force of humans and Eldar, silently aided by the Necrons, damaged and drove off the Fortress. It has not been seen since.

Planet Killer; The flagship of Abaddon, the Planet Killer is a ship capable of reducing an entire planet to rubble. It is believed that the ship is in fact impossible to build, and only the fact that natural laws hold no sway within the Eye of Terror allowed Abaddon to have the ultimate weapon of terror built.

It was first unleashed in the Gothic War, and rained havoc with Imperial forces, as well as having destroyed at least three worlds. The ship's only flaw was it's lack of speed, allowing it to be badly damaged, both by the multiple waves of torpedoes fired at extreme range in the Gothic War and later during the 13th Crusade it was too slow to avoid the debris from it's own attack.

Defiler; A six legged tank, armed with both heavy weaponry and a pair of massive pincer-claws, a Defiler is a weapon designed to break the backs of armies. The true horror of a Defiler, however, is that it is not manned in any conventional sense, but is instead possessed by a daemon. Where a Defiler walks, men die, and as the name suggests, they defile everything in their wake.

High Lords of Terra; A semi-democratic body, the high lords consist of 12 people (including the Fabricator General, Lord Militant, etc) who rule the Imperium in the Emperor's name. Some are elected, others get the position through being the heads of their respective orders.

Planetary Governor; The official title of the ruler of a world, although local titles (King, Sultan, etc) are more commonly used.

Forge world; One of several classifications of worlds, a Forge world is literally a world virtually covered in an immense factory churning out the tools, weapons and ships of the Imperium. Usually property of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Agrapinna; One of the worlds in the Cadian sector, the planet came under heavy attack during the 13th Crusade. Although the planet, and indeed the system at large, remains solidly in Imperial hands, many of the surrounding support worlds (such as the Agri-planets of Yayor, Ulthor and Dentor and the mining worlds of Albitern, Amistal and Tabor) have been taken or destroyed by the Chaos Legions. Mass rationing is effect across the system and without fresh supplies, many of it's forges have fallen silent.

Ecclesiarchy; The Cult of the Emperor's Word, the Ecclesiarchy is the official religion of the Imperium, and is the only Cult permitted by the Inquisition. With a few exceptions (most noticeably the Adeptus Astartes) every person in the Imperium follows the Cult of the God-Emperor.


	3. Chapter 2

Author's note

I apologize for the briefness of my previous note; I was working under some heavy time restrictions and I had to hurry with updating the story.

As some of you have gathered, my computer isn't accessing fanfiction dot net properly, preventing me from accessing or editing my stories from my own computer. Hopefully, the site's admin will contact me with a suggestion on how to rectify the problem, but until then I will have to borrow other computers to access the site properly. I'll endeavor to prevent this having any real effect on my efforts.

Regardless, I've got the next chapter of the story up, and I hope you will enjoy it.

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Reviews for Reborn Warriors;

nick2951: Yes there is room for a sequal, that's what you are reading now. Enjoy!

Liljimmyurine: I've gone through Reborn Warriors and edited it with hopefully correct spelling. If you spot something I missed, feel free to let me know. As for the plot…It's not exactly hoping around the timeline. I suspect that Shinji and Asuka would be more welcome in the Heresy then the 41st millennium, at least without prior knowledge of their arrival.

False Dead: Killing off the heros is a common occurrence in Warhammer 40,000. But fear not, shinji and Asuka are still alive, for now. cue evil laughter followed by coughing spree

Rahhel: Thanks for your support. I hope you enjoy this story as much as the previous one.

Stider: Thanks. As for which races are going to get involved, I'll only say that it will be mostly Imperium vs. Chaos. Hope you enjoy the story.

zero0x3000: Thanks for your support, and I hope you like the sequel. Unfortunatly, the website address you posted didn't show up, so I can't check out the timeline. Thanks anyway.

Macross VF1: You dare call ME evil? Space Marines, purge the heretic! Seriously, I'm glad you enjoyed the story, and I will try to keep as much of the focus as possible on our two heroes.

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Reviews for Final Crusade;

theclerk2: I hope you enjoy the update. Unfortunately there isn't much action in this chapter, but now most of the background and exposition is out of the way, expect more action in the future.

Diabloelmo: Thanks for the support and the pre-reading mate. I hope you bring out the next chapter of your story soon.

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As always criticism and advice is welcome, flamers get to have their resistance to heat tested by the Ordos Hereticus, using their own flames.

**Chapter 2**

It was raining blood.

For a world deep within the Eye of Terror, such abominable, and indeed, impossible occurrences were commonplace. And there was no planet deeper in then this one.

Immense black towers spiked impossibly high while the blood rain dripped down onto the slaves toiling within the muck around their bases. Higher up, platforms stretched out, immense pyres burning as Sorcerers of the Black Legion tossed prisoners, spare slaves and the occasional unruly Chaos Marine in a constant, never-ending sacrifice. Higher yet, and warships clustered around the tips of the towers, ranging from the more familiar cruisers that so often stabbed into the hated Imperium to oddly twisted and warped creations that could not possibly exist outside the warp rift.

Near one ship, an entire company of marines glared over the procession of thousands of slaves as they dragged the latest Chaos war machine out of the immense tooth edged door into the hulking fortress towards a nearby transport.

There were no moans from the slaves even as many of their number fell and were trampled under by their fellows, or shouts and sneers from the escorting marines. Not one of them dared to speak, for the Terminator bodyguard standing around the hulking figure watching over the proceedings would have likely as not struck that person down.

Finally, a shape began to emerge from the fortress. Anybody from the long-lost base of NERV, or the, much later, final clash of the Horus Heresy could identify it. It was a mostly grey near-reproduction of General-Purpose Combat Unit EVANGELION Unit 01. There were a few differences; the horn protruding from the center of the forehead was solid bone, twisted to a sharp point, the armor on the back was solid, with no obvious way to retrieve a pilot, the hands were twisted claws. Most horribly, the thing's armor constantly twisted and shifted, forming into the faces of those who had died, both in construction and in sacrifice to the Chaos powers, before collapsing into horrific symbols. The eight-pointed star of Chaos was spread across the Eva's chest, in parody of the armor of the Loyalist Astartes.

The rain drummed down steadily, baptizing the abomination in blood as it shifted across the exposed gantry. By the time the machine had been secured in the ship, over a hundred slaves had died. As the ship swooped up into orbit, a new ship drifted down as a replacement.

There were eleven more Evas to move.

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Deep in the vastness of space, at distances that make sense only when measured in multiples of the speed of light, space began to distort. A starship snapped from the chaotic Immaterium back into a more natural realm.

Even as the ship hung in space, sensors resetting from the energy burst moments ago, new ships come into view, weapons bared and armed. Signals and counter-signals were exchanged. Orders were transferred.

Three of the ships drift inwards, two of the guardians, their near-invisible black hulls decorated only with the image of a skull superimposed over an 'I', escorting the newcomer in.

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Inquisitor Lord Thorne, commander of the Inquisitorial Fortress on the otherwise uninhabited planet of Nemisis Tessara, stared out of the viewing port as the _Dauntless _Class Light Cruiser docked with the orbiting space station under the watchful gaze of two Black ships. Shaking his head, he turned to address the silent figure beside him.

"It wasn't until now that I really considered that it was possible." The man, if he could still be called a man, turned to watch him with one eye, two optic sensors and, Thorne was sure, the Servo-skull floating next to his shoulder.

HONESTLY, I HAD SOME DOUBTS OF MY OWN+ High Tech Magi Orgenati admitted. +ORDERED TO CEASE A FULL 25 OF ALL PRODUCTION, DIVERT IT TO CONSTRUCTING HAND WEAPONS THE SIZE OF BATTLE TANKS, PULL IN A FULL TWO SQUADRONS OF _WARLORD_ TITANS AND THEN TO TRANSPORT BOTH OF THE AFORE MENTIONED TO A SYSTEM RECORDED AS EMPTY AND AWAIT THE ARIVAL OF A PAIR OF ILL-BELIVED LEGENDS. WERE IT NOT FOR THE ALPHA-LEVEL SECURITY ON THE MESSAGE, I WOULD HAVE DISMISSED IT AS A LUNACY+ Thorne nodded in agreement.

"I had much the same response. Even after your arrival, I still could not believe that the High Lords thought a 10,000 year old legend, from the Heresy itself, would pop up out of nowhere, here in the very shadow of the Eye of Terror itself." Thorne shock his head, before turning back to the window. Outside, barely 20 meters away, the last docking clamp fastened on, and the main docking tube began to extend towards the _Hammerhead_.

IT'S ODD, BUT I ALMOST FEEL NERVOUS+ Orgenati admitted, mechendrites shifting slightly.

"I know. By the throne…here I am, an Inquisitor Lord with authority over virtually the entire sector, and I'm nervous about meeting a pair of youngsters not even into their twenties. Yet according to the legends, these two fought alongside giants like Rogal Dorn at the very start of the Imperium. The boy was even touched by the Emperor himself!"

AND IT'S NOT JUST THEIR PRESENCE+ Orgenati added in a unhappy monotone as the airlock to the _Hammerhead_ hissed open+IT'S ALSO WHAT THEIR PRESENCE MIGHT FORETELL+

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Shinji carefully forced himself to keep his eyes pointing forward as he and Asuka were guided down another corridor by an increasingly nervous Captain and a Navel Security team. Their status seemed to have changed during the voyage, from 'dangerous castaways' to honored guests'. In fact for most of the voyage, the survivors from the Sol's Fury had been left to their own devices, a time which both Asuka and Shinji had used to practice their High Gothic (both having become reasonably fluent in Low Gothic after the Horus Heresy). Still, the Navel Security escort seemed to have very itchy trigger fingers, and 28,000 years of development hadn't changed the very recognizable shape of a shotgun much. Shinji had no intention of inviting trouble.

As they reached the end of the corridor, the airlock in front of them hissed open. The room on the other side was…intimidating. There was the standard gothic architecture that characterized the Imperium, but it was all done in black or dark grey. The sides of the room were broken by a pair of blood-red tapestries, both with the two-headed Aquila prominently displayed. On the wall opposite to the entrance, a sealed metal hatch was decorated with an odd symbol; a stylized 'I', with an equally stylized skull mounted over it.

Of course the most intimidating thing, in Shinji's eyes, was the heavily armed Stormtroopers lined up against the far wall and the weapon emplacements mounted into each pillar in the room, and each of which was pointing a pair of heavy Bolters directly at the group.

"Welcome to Nemisis Tessara," a voice came from beside the group. Turning, Shinji spotted a couple of figures standing next to a large window. One was obviously a high-ranking Tech-priest, with the customary red robes and gold plated implants. The other…

He reminded Shinji, oddly enough, of Misato. Not the Beer-guzzling, highly emotional tornado at home, but the hardened will-do-nearly-anything-to-win soldier who had sent the Eva pilots into and brought them back out of too many dangerous situations for Shinji to easily remember.

He was dressed in an odd combination of the functional and the opulent; the cloak he wore was woven with an image of the galaxy, with an Aquila superimposed over it. Underneath, however, he wore a set of Imperial Guard fatigues. Obviously well made ones rather then the standard, itchy, mass-produced versions, but definitely functional. From his left eye-socket a glittering bionic studied the group, and the same 'I' mounted on the hatch hung from his neck.

"I am Inquisitor Lord Thorne of the Emperor's Inquisition, commander of this facility. My companion her is High Tech Magi Orgenati, temporarily assigned here by the High Lords of Terra. I hope your journey here was not too onerous?" Some instinct led Shinji to glance sideways. Asuka was trembling with something between shock and rage. Shinji laid a hand on her shoulder, hoping to cut off the impending rant on being attacked by daemons, wrenched out of the warp and forced under a kind of 'house-arrest' during the two week voyage from wherever they had been picked up.

"It, ah, could have been better," Shinji said quickly, trying to ignore Asuka's glare.

"Well, this base is probably one of the safest in the sector at the present, so hopefully you will have the time to recover before we deploy you. At that," Thorne turned his attention to the nervous Captain Jaroin, "I do not require your presence at the present Captain. Return to your ship, and send us any requests for re-supply you need, and provide our dock-crews with any assistance they need to unload your, ah, 'cargo'. I'll require you to return on board tomorrow at 14:00 for a…briefing on how important the secrecy of the location is to the Imperium. You are dismissed."

"O-of course My Lord!" Jaroin stammered, before retreating back down the docking collar. It couldn't have been called fleeing, only because it was too slow for that.

"And perhaps you would prefer some time to rest and refresh yourself before we…discuss the present situation." Thorne gestured towards the immense hatch, which slowly pulled open.

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Shinji examined his surroundings with a mixture of apprehension and confusion. Everything seemed a bit…off. Admittedly Shinji had spent only two to three months in the 31st millennium, and all of that time either on Ear…Terra or the spaceship _Sol's Fury_, but this base above Nemisis Tessara seemed to be 'out-of-sync' with the Imperium Shinji knew.

It wasn't the architecture, which remained as heavily Gothic as anywhere else Shinji had seen (although the Imperial Aquila seemed to be even more invasive then back in the Imperial Palace, alongside the strange 'I' icon for the Inquisition), or the technology, which remained an odd combination of the futuristic and the ancient with heavily modified servitors striding along candle-lit corridors. It was the…attitude for lack of a better word.

Back on Terra, virtually everyone Shinji had talked, with exceptions of the Adaptus Mechanicus and the single Space Marine Shinji had met, to had seemed to be either shell-shocked from the attack, or incredibly jumpy. Here…

_Well, they do seem to be fairly jumpy_, Shinji noted, spotting yet another Stomtrooper squad patrol pass them. It seemed to be almost a kind of confident form of jumpy, as if they had experienced everything possible and knew exactly what to do in any situation.

"Ah, here we are," Thorne said, breaking Shinji out of his introspection. Thorne pushed open the door, and led them into a well-furnished conference room. Shinji happily sank into one of the padded seats. "Would you care for refreshments?" Thorne asked, gesturing to a servitor, a tray of bottles and classes held within two arms while a third hovered over the tray. "A small Amasec for me," Thorne added.

"Ah, just some water thanks," Shinji replied, watching the servitor calmly begin pouring drinks.

"Same here," Asuka muttered unconvincingly as she slumped into the next seat over with a slight sigh.

I DO NOT REQUIRE LIQUID REFRESHMENT AT THIS TIME, THANK YOU+ the previously silent Tech Magi finished. There was a short silence as the group sipped at their respective drinks, before Shinji finally decided to 'grasp the bull by the horns'.

"Erm, can I ask something," Shinji asked hesitantly.

"Certainly," Thorne nodded, "I would be happy to answer any reasonable question you have."

"Well," Shinji hesitated, unsure of how to put the question, "everything seems slightly strange. I mean, we were just on Ear…Terra, and everything…" Shinji stalled, unsure of how to continue.

"What Shinji is trying to say," Asuka interrupted, "is mainly where are we, and, given those stories the crewmen on the _Sol's Fury_ were feeding us, what's the date?"

"Nemisis Tessara is located within the Cadian Sector, deep within the galactic north, in the Segmentum Obscurus" Thorne replied, before he hesitated and shared a glace with Orgenati which made Shinji feel even more nervous, "and…it's 5 809 998 M41."

Shinji frowned with slowly dawning apprehension. _The first number is the location, sort of; the larger it is, the further from Ea… Terra you are. The first group is the 'year fraction', followed by the year number as the second group. Then the 'M' number is the number of millennia so that means that…_

"It's been 10,000 years since the end of the Heresy," Thorne finished.

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Thorne watched quietly as his statement slowly sank into the minds of the two 'Eva' pilots. So far, He had been trying to rebuild his image of the two were ever since they had met.

_I know the legends indicated they were young, but I didn't really expect, well, children!_ On seeing the two, Thorne had almost concluded that this was some kind of joke. Yet the High Lords didn't play jokes, and the message had defiantly been genuine. The message had also confirmed that the legends about how the two of them had taken on and defeated over twenty Chaos Titans and numerous abominations during the Horus Heresy were true, so the two must have had hidden depths. So Thorne had held his tongue, greeted the two and led them into the base while keeping both an unobtrusive eye and a subtle psychic tap on both of them. Despite the boy Shinji's stammering earlier, both seemed fairly observant and self-confident, and their minds were much older then their outer appearance suggested.

"Well…" Shinji sighed finally, "it isn't the first time it's happened. I suppose we can cope."

"So," the girl, Asuka if Thorne's memory was accurate, began, "why are we here? I assume, given what happened last time we hopped forward through time, that you want us to do some fighting or something for you." Thorne's estimation of the two went up another notch.

"Honestly," Thorne admitted, "I'm not completely sure myself about all the details. I've received orders from the High Lords of Terra, the rulers of the Imperium in the Emperor's name, to prepare for your arrival, while High Tech Magi Orgenati was ordered to prepare tools to repair and arm your, ah, 'Evangelions', bring in about 16 Titans to support you and transports to move you about. The details of what the High Lords intend for you, however, have yet to be sent to us, and given what Orgenati's told me earlier, you won't be ready for combat for a while, so you'll have some time to rest from the changes that have been thrust at you." There was another pause as the two considered this, before they gave out a simultaneous sigh.

"I suppose hoping we wouldn't have to fight again was a bit silly," Asuka muttered quietly.

"So, if 01 and 02 are being repaired, are we getting anything new?" Shinji asked curiously.

"Orgenati?" Thorne asked, glancing over at the Tech Priest.

WE DO HAVE A FEW CHANGES THAT THE HIGH LORDS REQUESTED, I DO HAVE A LIST…+ Orgenati reached into his robes and pulled out a data-slate which he proceeded to examine. +WE'VE MADE MOST OF THE TOOLS TO THE SPECTIFICATIONS THAT WE WERE GIVEN; ARMOR PLATING WE'VE BASED ON SOME ASPECTS OF OUR POWER ARMOR SUITS, SCALED UP WEAPONRY, AS WELL AS A FEW OTHER ITEMS WE CAN GO INTO IN GREATER DETAIL LATER. THERE ARE A COUPLE OF ITEMS, HOWEVER, THAT WE STILL NEED TO WORK ON THAT WILL DELAY DEPLOYMENT+

"Such as…" Thorne asked, indicating Orgenati to continue.

WELL…WE NEED TO CLONE AN… 'S2 ORGAN' I BELIVE IT'S CALLED. I BELIVE THAT SHINJI CAN INDICATE WHERE THE ORIGIONAL IS LOCATED ON HIS UNIT 01+ Orgenati glanced at Shinji inquisitively, who nodded slowly. +WE'VE BEEN REWORKING THE LOCAL MACHINERY TO ALLOW US TO VAT-CLONE A NEW ORGAN FOR ATTACHMENT TO UNIT 02+ Glancing over at the two pilots, Thorne noticed that Asuka seemed fairly cheerful about the news, nudging Shinji with an elbow. Personally, Thorne couldn't imagine any competent military authority constructing a war machine dependent on an external power supply for effective operation, but from what few pre-Imperium details that were in the message, NERV didn't really sound like it was primarily military, more like an R&D section which had been force onto the front-lines extremely prematurely.

WE'VE ALSO BEEN ORDERED TO PREPARE A PAIR OF PRINCEPS MIND IMPULSE UNIT IMPLANTS AND DATA-PLUGS+ Orgenati continued. +USING THESE WE CAN BYPASS THESE INEFFICIANT 'IMPULSE HEADSETS' AND ENSURE A FULL INTEGRATION BETWEEN THE EVA AND PILOT. THE SURGERY AND RECOVERY TIME, THE CLONING AND IMPLANTATION TIME, THE REQUIRED TRAINING, ALL IN ALL WILL LIKELY DELAY US UP TO ABOUT A MONTH+

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"Damn it, I want heavy weapon fire on that transport now!" General Meritt of the Lorone Planetary Defense Force shouted into _Indomitable Force_'s Vox-ponder as the ancient Leman Russ shuddered towards the splintered remains of the Space Port. Lorone was a simple Agri-world in the Cadian sector, without the trade routes and strategic location that had made worlds like Yayor such an attractive target, and Meritt had offered fervent thanks that this world had remained untouched to the Emperor each day.

Thanks that now seemed to have been wasted; a Chaos fleet, consisting only of a Slaughter and a Devastation class cruiser with a pair of Iconoclast Destroyers had attacked the system, destroying the pitifully outmatched defense frigates in a few hours.

And now a single transport had touched down. Just one. Meritt ground his teeth angrily as he dropped back down inside the turret and dogged the hatch shut. _Damn it,_ Merritt thought angrily, _I know we're not some fortress world like Cadia, but my PDF isn't that bad. I'm going to make those bastards pay in blood for this insult._

"First platoon, form up tighter under our cover, _Might's Wrath_, _Grendel_, take up flanking positions on my rear. Fire when you have a target." It was a reasonable plan; use the tanks to punch through whatever the first wave was as they disembarked while the troop carriers deployed PDF troops to surround the only exit on the transport and destroy the enemy presence in detail as the transport's exit bottlenecked the opposing force. Although without the resources of a richer world, Meritt had trained his men well, and they had a reasonable shot of winning.

_Their damn well not going to take my world without a…_ Meritt thought, before a blast that seemed like the end of the world slammed into the ground barely meters behind _Indomitable Force_ and sent the tank spinning into the air.

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Soulless eyes stared calculatingly down at the site of the orbital bombardment. The report from the surveyors indicated that the main opposing force had been destroyed; there was nothing left on the planet that could oppose his master's will now.

"Send the order," he growled to the _Decay_'s Comm. Officer.

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Meritt groaned as he opened his eyes. The _Indomitable Force_ had been turned into a shattered husk, but the blast had been focused on the following troop transports, missing the _Indomitable Force_; the tank's main hull had apparently managed to hold up enough to save his life. Meritt tried to move, only to gasp as his leg erupted in pain and collapse against the hull plate. Glancing down, he realized that his leg was trapped underneath the remains of a seat bracketing; by the look of it the leg was broken.

There was a low, hostile hiss.

Meritt instinctively drew his Laspistol with the fearful respect of the wild animals that Lorone's woods hid; though the planet never had any large predators, it had many highly poisonous snakes that wouldn't think twice about going after a human.

Meritt examined the interior of the _Indomitable Force_ with a fear-fueled concentration. _No sign of a neo-snake or slither-snapper…_ he thought before stopping with a mental jerk.

There was something in the tank with him. Looking for something small, Meritt had nearly missed it. It looked like a black patch of space, a three dimensional shadow. The very darkness of the creature hid the details, but it was humanoid, and somehow gave the impression of being armored. A wispiness around the edges of the figure; an impression of tendrils and claws haloing it caused Meritt's mind to whisper one word; _Daemon…_ Meritt didn't hesitate; raising his pistol he fired a stream of las shots straight at the shadowy figure.

"What the…" Meritt gasped as his las-fire passed straight through the shadowy creature and scored the metal behind it. The creature hesitated, seeming to stare at him, before reaching for him. Meritt desperately tried to scurry backwards from his prone position, but his body seemed to refuse to obey him. The tip of a shadowy claw touched him. Meritt had the interesting and painful sensation of feeling his body decompose into a red liquid that collapsed from his naked soul. Meritt watched in a kind of painful disbelief as the shadow, somehow much clearer then a few seconds ago, grabbed his wrist. The two of them drifted out through the tank's hull, and as he cleared the armor, Meritt was one of the first people to see a Chaos-altered Evangelion without the filters of living flesh, as it ripped it's way out of the Chaos space transport.

His scream merged with the psychic shriek of the entire planet's population as they were all drawn into the body of the twisted Eva, which roared it's pleasure into the sky.

A long-delayed 3rd Impact had come to Lorone.

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The psychic scream of the inhabitants of the dying world echoed throughout the Warp with an unheard of strength. Dozens of Astropaths throughout the Cadian sector were burned out, many literally as the psychic force immolated the unlucky Psykers from the inside out.

There were eleven more planets to go…

To be Continued…

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Eye of Terror; an immense Warp-real space overlap, the Eye of Terror is an whirlpool of energy that exists both in the physical universe and the madness of the Warp. A place where physical laws shift constantly, the Eye of Terror is home to the Traitor survivors of the Horus Heresy. Since time moves in anything but a straight line from past to future here, the same marines that fought on Terra are still alive now, 10,000 years later.

Black Legion; One of the most dangerous Chaos Legions, the Black legion is based on the DNA of Horus himself. They pay equal respect to each of the four Chaos powers, and invite daemonic possession constantly. Loyal now only to Abaddon, they have been responsible for some of the worst atrocities in Imperial history.

Eight-pointed Star of Chaos; The main symbol of Chaos Undivided. All other symbols tend to embody only single aspects of Chaos.

Inquisition; Formed after the Horus Heresy, the Inquisition was formed to watch for corruption from within and without. Heavily fractionized, the Inquisition is split into three parts; the Ordos Xenos (watches for alien contamination), the Ordos Malleus (deals with the daemonic) and Ordos Hereticus (concerned with traitors and heretics within the Imperium). Considered one of the highest authorities, although it exists outside the command structure. Due to the Inquisition's fanatical hatred of the Imperium's enemies, in this case the cure is almost as bad as the disease.

Nemisis Tessara; According to the maps of the Imperium, Nemisis Tessara is a dead planet of absolutely no value. In fact it is the main fortress of the Inquisition within the Cadian Sector. It most often deals with the forces of Chaos (the first Defiler recovered by the Inquisition was bought here for study and termination). During the 13th Crusade, a traitor Inquisitor betrayed then location to the Chaos forces, but a fierce battle held off the archenemy, and a subsequent purge removed all traces of treachery from the system.

Black ship; The name given to the warships used by the Inquisition. They are used for two purposes; supporting the actions of the Inquisition and transporting Psykers to Terra for evaluation and training/sacrifice.

Amasec; A common alcoholic beverage in the Imperium.

Mind Impulse Unit; A link between mind and machine, allowing a human to mentally control a mechanical device. Most commonly used to bind Princeps and Titan together.

Segmentum Obscurus; One of the five Segmentums that define the galaxy. The central one is 'Solar', the northern one is 'Obscurus', east is 'Ultima' , south is 'Tempestus' and west is 'Pacificus'. Due to the shear size of the galaxy, each is semi-independent and raise and supports it's own armies and navies with allegiance only to the High Lords and the Emperor.

Shadow Daemons; In End of Evangelion, the victims of 3rd Impact were all touched by copies of Rei before they collapsed into LCL. Since common knowledge seems to have these copies as reflections of extensions of Lilith's soul, the new 3rd Impact caused by the Chaos Eva should also have copies of the Eva's souls drawing the victims in. Since the soul of this Eva is a much more malignant entity, I felt the copies should reflect that.


	4. Chapter 3

Author's note

Not too much to say here. I've downloaded a copy of Firefox for dealing with fanfiction dot net, it seems to be working for now. For a certain part of this story, I should stress that I am using the novel version, not the game version (it'll make sense when you reach the section in question). Regardless, I hope you enjoy this chapter. And now for the reviews;

James Axelrad; No problem, I guessed that that might be the case when I got so few reviews before.

TenWings; Updated. Enjoy.

Yoshomo; Well, I'm glad you like it. As for the result of the Titan style MIU implant, see below.

nick2951; Thank you for your review, and I'll try to keep updating reasonably regularly. No promises though, I have a hectic schedule.

Asarganth; Pardon? Well, regardless, I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Col. Hammer; I find that my Cognitor responds reasonably well to my needs. On occasion, however, I have been forced to use the 'Scared Hammer of Initiation'. In this case, however, I believe that it is the fact that I use the prayer-program Safari for my work. Despite it's previous efficiency, the present problem does not appear to be easily fixable, and may be affecting other systems then mine. Regardless, I've downloaded a copy of Firefox that seems to be working for now.

As always criticism and advice is welcome, flamers will be lobotomized and provided to the Adeptus Mechanicus to serve as a Servitor as a penance.

**Chapter 3**

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_

_Two weeks ago…_

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Shinji realized he was raising his hand to rub the back of his neck again, and quickly lowered it back to his side. Things had changed over the past couple of weeks, and the evidence was all around him. Unit 01 loomed overhead, servitors spraying the last of the bare metal with purple paint. The Eva seemed bulkier now. Not massively, the new armor wasn't that much thicker then the old, but the servo-fibers increased the thickness a fair amount.

"Worried?" someone asked from behind him. Shinji turned and spotted Asuka leaning casually against the wall.

"Actually, yeah," Shinji admitted turning and leaning against the railings. "I mean, the Princeps I've talked to all say that their Titans, well, get inside their heads when they first connect. I'm not sure I'm ready for that." Absent mindedly, he reached up and started rubbing at the small square of metal inset into the back of his neck again. It didn't actually feel strange, aside from a cool feeling from the metal.

"It probably won't really be anything new" Asuka replied, shrugging. "I mean, we've both piloted them with high synch ratios, we've both been 'sucked' into them with 400 ratios, yours has gone berserker…"

"Your nervous too, huh?" Asuka hesitated, before shrugging.

"Well, maybe a little. But nothing scares the Great Asuka Langley!" Shinji held back a chuckle. "Besides, my test won't be for a few days yet, they still need to finish implanting the S2 organ into Unit 02."

EVANGELION UNIT 01 NOW READY FOR TESTING. WOULD PILOT IKARI PLEASE REPORT TO THE DOCKING PLATFORM+ the Vox-system blared out.

"I'd better go. See you later." Shinji turned and walked off to the gangway leading round the back of the Eva.

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Shinji willed himself to sit still without fidgeting as the entry plug sank into the Eva's back. _Damn… I'm even more nervous then when I _first_ did this! _Shinji thought to himself. It was true; when he had first entered Unit 01, Shinji had been filled with too much self-loathing, apathy and worry for Rei to feel really nervous about piloting Unit 01, and after he had first seen the 3rd Angel, he had been too scared to be nervous.

There was a familiar clunk as the thick armor pulled closed over the entry plug. There was a flicker as the control handles activated and the newly repaired screens went from black to dark grey. A Comm. Window opened up, revealing the figure of High Tech Magi Orgenati.

BASIC SYSTEM START-UP COMPLETE, OMNISSIAH BE PRAISED. FILLING THE ENTRY PLUG+ With a splashing sound, the plug began to fill with the orangey-red of LCL. Shinji frowned.

"Erm… Orgenati?" Orgenati paused in the middle of a hymn, and gave Shinji the kind of glare that a reverend would give to someone snoring in the middle of a sermon. Fortunately, interruptions were acceptable in a Tech-ceremony; mostly to give the people involved the chance to deal with things like bolts that decided to be stubborn during the Rite of Activation.

YES PILOT+

"Where did you get the LCL? I thought the last of it had become useless a long time ago."

ONE OF THE MODIFICATIONS TO THE EVA WAS TO TAP THE HOLY MACINE'S BLOODSTREAM FOR THE REQUIRED SUBSTANCE; THE AMOUT NECESSARY TO FILL THE ENTRY PLUG IS LESS THEN A DROP COMPARED TO THE TOTAL CIRCULATORY SYSTEM. IF I MAY CONTINUE+ Shinji stared down at the liquid that had just reached his shoulders, and fought down the urge to vomit.

LET THE SPIRITUS MACHINA INVEST THIS MACHINE WITH LIFE. BRING THE S2 ORGAN TO FULL POWER+

Shinji let his mind drift somewhat as the Tech-priests went into another ceremony to the Machine-God. This one sounded like it could last a while. It was several more minutes, but finally…

LET THE SPIRIT OF THE GOD-MACHINE LINK THE MIND IMPULSE UNIT TO IT'S PILOT, BY THE WILL OF THE LORD OF KNOWLEDGE+ Orgenati finally intoned. Shinji glanced up, almost against his will. A bundle of cables unfolded from the ceiling of the entry plug and descended towards the back of his head. There was a feathery feeling as the ends of the plugs sought for the sockets, before plugging in one by one.

INITIATING THE A-10 NERVE CONNECTION…+

Shinji felt a moment of pressure at the base of his sku…

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Orgenati lurched back instinctively from the window as Unit 01 roared in pain and lurched forward against it's restraints. The wall around the clamps over it's right arm were already fracturing.

QUICKLY! ARM THE WEAPON SYSTEMS+ Orgenati shouted. As several Hydra weapon batteries unfolded from the walls, Orgenati stabbed at the console in front of him. A few seconds passed, marked by the sudden crack of the right arm restraints giving way, before the console beeped. The machine-spirit of the bomb Orgenati had hidden in the Eva's entry plug had woken. Orgenati laid a finger on the trigger, before turning to the Comm. Screen and Shinji's convulsing form.

PILOT IKARI, CAN YOU HEAR ME! YOU NEED TO SHUT DOWN NOW+

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_I stared around the apartment in shock. How could the cheerful woman who picked me up earlier, be the same woman who brought me to my father and ordered me about in a giant robot? How could the women who kind-heartedly let me live with her be the same focused officer who agreed to let a badly-injured girl fight to save the city by herself. And how could either of them also be the woman who lived in this… pigsty?_

_I laughed as Sensei Fuyutsuki finished the lecture with his customary joke. I gathered my books together and left the lecture hall. As I walked down the hallway, I felt someone's eyes fall on me, and I turned. There Gendo was, the smile on his face that he shows only to me._

_I relish the taste of flesh as I ripped it apart and fed, fed on the body of the attacker of myself and my fighting brethren. The ecstasy as my pilot joined with me in the feast. The power as I took my foe's heart for my own. The satisfaction as I returned to my slumber._

_I rest my Cello against my shoulder, and rest the bow against the strings. Carefully, one note at a time I begin to play. I can feel the tension leave me as I play, loosing myself in the music. I haven't done this since I arrived here, just play for the sake of playing. Once my favorite escape from a lifeless existence, now my life is full of more action, work, emotion then I dreamed possible that I need to escape, not from dull existence, but from an ideal that I fear I can't live up to._

_I glanced up and smile at Shinji as the entry plug's hatch begins to close. In just a few minutes, General Purpose Combat Evangelion; Unit 01 will be activated for the first time. The work that has consumed the last five years of my life will either bare fruit or die on the branch in a few seconds._

_I howl with rage as I see what my foul cousins have done to my fighting partner. The winged monster have torn him apart, he barely lives. Rage fills me, and I feel my pilot scream with the same anger. We will have VENGENCE!_

_I…_

_I…_

Shinji/Yui/Unit 01 struggled out of the tangle of memory, and tried to make sense of it's surroundings. It was secured to a damaged platform, yet drifting in a red liquid. It was seeing gun batteries aiming at its face, yet it saw a screen showing several people shouting worriedly. It heard…

_We/I can't function like this_, Shinji/Yui/Unit 01 conceded. _We/I need to disperse somewhat; as a team not as a person…_

Shinji gasped and choked on the LCL as he suddenly found himself pulling free of the massive melding of the souls within the machine.

…SWER ME! PILOT IKARI, CAN YOU HEAR ME. YOU MUST HALT THE STRUGGLES OF YOUR EVANGELION; YOU ARE CAUSING MASSIVE STRUCTURAL DAMAGE TO THE CONTAINMENT UNIT+

"I…" Shinji forced his body, and by extension, Unit 01, to stop struggling, "I'm okay… Give me a minute…" Shinji fought to breath normally. It was a couple of seconds before he felt his racing heart finally begin to slow down.

WE ARE ENDING THE TEST NOW. SHUT DOWN UNIT 01. WE WILL TRY AGAIN TOMORROW+

"Okay." Shinji sagged with a mixture of relief, and an odd sense of longing, as the cables slipped out of his neck and retreated back into the ceiling.

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_One week ago…_

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_

There is a world, a great distance from the Segmentum Solar, and the capital world of Terra. Named T'au, it is the homeworld of the Tau race. A desert planet, with the white glare of city domes, much more pleasing to the eye then the gue'la skyscrapers, and guarded by highly advanced warships, it is the focal point of the might of the Tau Empire.

Within one of the domes, Tau Earth caste workers tended to various injuries in dozens of wards, tirelessly working towards the Tau ideal of the 'Greater Good'. Yet past the busy wards, there is a door. Uniquely amongst the many rooms, this door is well sealed, dark and unlit. Within the secured ward, a young Fire Warrior lay, secured to an upright gantry. One arm was missing, replaced by a sophisticated bionic arm. The gleam of his eyes showed the madness of two souls struggling for dominance, one the hard-line sanity of the Tau and the other the madness of Chaos.

Suddenly, the Fire Warrior began to shudder, pulling at his restraints. Out of the teaming masses of the planet, Fire, Earth, Water, Air and Ethreal castes alike, only he heard the immense scream of a planet dying. The monitoring drones noted the sudden spike in the Tau's life signs, and quickly summoned assistance. Rushing Earth caste workers quickly entered the ward, only to recoil as the injured Tau finally began to scream with a horror that no other Tau would have revealed.

Finally, as the Earth caste doctors overcame their shock and began to administer pain-suppressants, the Tau collapsed with exhaustion. There was only the sound of heavy breathing and the beep of the medical drones for a long moment, before the injured Fire Warrior opened his eyes.

"El'Lusha," Shas'la T'au Kais gasped with a throat horse from his scream. "I have to speak with el'Lusha."

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Shinji woke to agony.

He rolled off the bunk and onto his knees as the spike of pain seemed to twist in his mind like a red-hot knife. Faintly over the sounds of his own screams, Shinji could hear the screams of others in pain, thousands of voices screaming into the void.

It seemed like it would never stop.

Then, with no warning it vanished, as if someone had thrown a switch. Shinji gasped, lowering his forehead to the cold floor for a few seconds. Breathing heavily, Shinji came to his knees, and looked over at Asuka. She was lying sprawled across her bunk, gasping for breath.

"Wha…" Shinji crocked through a horse throat, "what was that?" Asuka looked up, with an expression that nearly made Shinji cringe back. Not only was the same fear and pain written across her face that Shinji felt, but also the fear of an old horror.

"It… it was something inside our heads…" she replied, voice shaking.

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"I don't know what it was," Thorne admitted to the assembled meeting of high-ranking Inquisitors, Tech-priests, Guardsmen, Astropaths, as well as the two pilots. "All we've gathered so far is that it struck over most of our personnel."

"Approximately 670,000 of our million strong population," added Adept Gathoris of the Administratum. "And that doesn't include the people in the orbiting fortresses or the ships of the fleet. All in all, about two thirds of our people were effected to varying levels."

"Two of my brethren are dead; synaptic shock," Master Astropath Carnarmire said, empty eye sockets staring down at the table. "Another five are in a coma. And the number of Navigator fatalities compare."

"Do you know what it was?" Thorne asked. "It seemed psychic in nature."

"It was a psychic death scream," Carnarmire, shaking his head, the wires protruding from his skull waving about, "of an incredible level. Most of those effected were latents; their psychic abilities miniscule or strongly dormant. For them it was simply agony. Us Psykers, however, heard it as a scream from billions of voices. It…" Carnarmire paused, and shuddered. "The only records of similar events were during the Gothic War and the 13th Crusade… when the planet Killer fired."

The hall erupted into noise.

"QUIET!" Thorne shouted. After the noise subsided, he turned back to Carnarmire. "The Planet Killer… So a world has died?"

"No, this is larger by a whole order of magnitude. It… it was the overlapping screams of at least ten worlds dieing nearly simultaneously. Probably more." There was a shocked silence.

"I don't know what's caused this," Thorne said finally, "but it's obviously something powerful and dangerous, and no guesses about who caused it. I want the entire facility on full alert. Commander Harthion, set up a thirty thousand kilometer exclusion zone around the planet; no ship will be allowed to enter the zone without the expressed permission of myself or Inquisitor Jarione. Magi Orgenati, get the Eva's, their pilots and anything else they need to fight loaded up on the _Warrior's Chariot_ now, I want you to be ready to lift by twelve hundred local time. Astropath Carnarmire, send a message to Cadia Command. Request an update of the situation and ask them if there's anywhere they might like a couple of Titan squads deployed. Move it people!"

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A _Dauntless_-Class Light Cruiser, three _Imperial Firestorm_-Class Frigates, a _Harbinger_-class super-heavy transport ship and a pair of the Inquisition's Black Ships flew through space for the jump point at the edge of the system.

A grotesquely colored ball of light swallowed the importune squadron, leaving nothing behind.

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_Now…_

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Shinji pushed open the door to the _Warrior's Chariot_'s briefing room, holding it for Asuka before entering himself. Thorne glanced up, and waved them to take a seat alongside Orgenati.

"We're about to arrive at the Bar-El system in the Agrapinna Sub-sector," he said, shifting a pile of data-slates around. "I don't have the time to give you a full briefing, but in short; Cadia Command confirms that a total of twelve planets have been depopulated. What's interesting is that the Astropaths of Jarmorne IV managed to send a pict-capture off-world before they died." Thorne picked up a data-slate and skimmed it across the table. "Have a look."

The image was blurred almost illegibly, from motion and hasty encryption for transmission, but the humanoid shape was recognizable, as was the twin shoulder blades.

"An Eva?" Asuka gasped. Thorne frowned and leaned forward.

"Is there any chance that another Eva could have survived this long?"

"I don't think so, "Shinji replied, shaking his head, "I mean, Unit 00 was destroyed fighting the 16th Angel, Unit 03 vanished permanently, Unit 04… I had to destroy myself…"

"And between the two of us," Asuka continued as Shinji hesitated, "we pretty much took care of the MP-Evas. They cost billions too, so I doubt anybody could have built a hidden, secret one, even if they could have found a pilot."

"So, if it is an Eva," Thorne mused, "it must have been built recently… I wonder how…" He shock his head. "Regardless, the PDF forces on reported that there is at least two of them down there. It's the first report we've had since the attacks a week ago, so I decided that we should investigate and halt whatever Chaos incursion is happening on the planet. Hopefully we can find out exactly what this new weapon of the Despoiler is, and take them out befo he can do much more damage."

WHAT TYPE OF PLANET IS BAR-EL+ Orgenati asked.

"Officially, it's classified as a Civilized world, which could mean anything. Unfortunately, the 13th Crusade destroyed a lot of the relevant records within the system, and the Administratum is being as slow as ever to transmit the relevant records from the adjacent sectors."

A bell pealed out, coinciding with the odd twisting sensation as the _Warrior's Chariot_ dropped out of the Warp.

"You'd better get ready," Thorne said, climbing to his feet, "this is likely to be a nasty one."

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The sky of the planet Bar-El screamed as the heavily modified _Harbinger_-class transport _Warrior's Chariot_ dropped into the atmosphere like a falling rock. Anti-gravity systems flared at 110 of their deign capacity fighting to stabilize the fall even as the main engines poured a fury of fire into a tail stretching all the way to orbit.

Shinji instinctively clung to the edge of the Eva's seat, even knowing that if the ship's stressed systems failed, nothing he could do would prevent him from being crushed into a red goo, while his mind clung to the mental link to Yui and Unit 01. The practice they had had led them to develop a loose connection. While Shinji actually piloted the Eva, supported by Unit 01's natural predatory instincts while Yui kind of… watched over Shinji's shoulders. That was the best way Shinji could describe it; while Shinji focused on the battle, Yui watched the sensors on the overall war, warning Shinji of anything he had missed. Shinji's suggestion that she fought had been argued down, mostly due to the fact that he had physical glands; the advantage of adrenaline and the ability to fight intelligently apparently was better then any of Yui's or Unit 01's advantages.

A third Comm. Window opened on the screens, covering the link from the ship's sensors and the gleeful laughter of the screen labeled 'Unit 02'.

PREPARE FOR DROP+ Orgenati said, busily handling several controls at once. +THE LANDING ZONE IS HOT, WE'LL NEED YOU TO CLEAR IT OF ENEMY FORCES+

"Wait a minute," Asuka said over the Comm. "You mean we're testing the drop systems here? I thought you hadn't had time to properly test them!"

THE SYSTEMS WILL WORK OPTIMALLY+ Orgenati replied calmly. +YOU SHOULD TOUCH DOWN WITH LESS KINETIC ENERGY THEN A SPACE MARINE DROP POD+

_Yeah,_ Shinji thought to himself, _so would a ballistic missile._ The fury of an Astartes Orbit-to-Ground Drop Pod assault was something he remembered all too well from the Heresy.

Unit 01 shuddered, and began to shift down along the tracks towards the base of the ship.

MOVING EVANGELION UNITS 01 AND 02 TO THE DROP TUBE+

Unit 01 ground to a halt, posed just above a large metal hatch. The ship shuddered once, and then the groan of the hull faded as the ship's breaking engines fired and it dropped to sub-sonic speeds. The metal hatch pulled apart, revealing rushing air directly below the Eva's feet. Shinji forced himself to swallow and breath regularly.

DISENGAGING SECONDARY RESTRAINTS. COMMENCING DROP IN TRES…+

DUE…+

UNUS…+

ENGAGUS+

For a second, Shinji hung in the air…

To be Continued…

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Hydra weapon battery; Anti-air cannon. Four guns fire a stream of bullets with enough power to down targets with light or medium armor.

Tau; a new race, recently evolved, the Tau are a new super-power in the Galaxy. Although the Tau Empire is small on galactic scales, they have an advanced technological base which they are(almost uniquely) constantly improving. The Tau are split into several racial groups of castes; Earth, Fire, Water, Air and Ethreal. Each Caste is almost genetically suited to perform a certain aspect of society and interlink together as a whole. It is perhaps this trait that leads to the Taus' fascination with the 'Greater Good', a concept of uniting the entire galaxy together in peace and cooperation…under the beneficial rule of the Ethereals of course. At present, the only limiting factor to the Tau is their lack of effective Warp travel. Since the Tau seem to have no psychic potential at all, this may be a impassable barrier, though if any race can figure out a none-psychic method of navigating the Warp, it'll be the Tau.

Fire (Shas); The warrior caste of the Tau Empire. Although they tend to be weaker then most other races in close combat, their superior technology allows them to effectively deal with most enemies at range.

Earth (Fio); The building and engineer caste of the Empire.

Water (Por); The diplomat caste of the Empire.

Air (Kor); The pilot caste of the Empire.

Ethreal (Aun); The ruling caste of the Empire. All other Tau seem to obey any member of this caste almost instinctively. The Tau claim that this is the nature of the Tau race, other races darkly hint at latent psychic powers or other means of coercion.

Naming method; The Tau have a complex system of naming a Tau, although it boils down to this. The fist part of the name consists of caste and rank, e.g. a fire warrior recruit is a Shas'laas. The second part of the name is the world the Tau was born on. Finally the last group is the given name. Especially competent Tau sometimes gains further parts to his/her name; these are usually descriptive honorifics.

Bar-El; A planet in the Agrapinna Sub-sector. No other data readily available.


	5. Chapter 4

Author's note

Sorry for the delay in writing and releasing this chapter, but I recently discovered the Web-comic 'Schlock Mercenary' and I was… distracted. Regardless, I hope you guys enjoy this chapter.

The next chapter will also be up soon as it's primarily a short filler linking this chapter to chapter 6.

imperial guardsman; Thanks. I'll do my best to keep it up.

James Axelrad; Opps. I'll get it fixed when editing.

WillTheWatcher; Thanks a lot! I hope you keep reading.

nick2951; I hope the fight's up to your expectations. As for the High Lords, Shinji and Asuka met (or at least saw) one of the first High Lords (Fabricator General Kane) back during the Horus Heresy (Reborn Warriers; previous story). Given the fact that the Emperor took the time to greet them personally, I assume they were treated very well. Of course, they haven't met the _present-day_ High Lords…

melgar; I'm glad you've enjoyed my story enough to research it's original basis. As for Kais… well you'll have to see. I only advise you to consider that, on an entire world of millions of Tau, he was the only one to hear the Chaos Eva's first attack. I say no more here.

As always criticism and advice is welcome, flamers will be wired into the Golden Throne of Terra as a noble sacrifice to the God-Emperor.

**Chapter 4**

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Trooper Jorik slowly eased his head over the edge of the balcony sticking out from the remains of the spaceport's servitor maintenance pen. A few days ago, he had been Special Weapons (Sniper) Expert Trooper Jorik, assigned as part of Captain Rorguten's forces to defend Bar-El's main spaceport from outside attack.

When the drop pods had begun falling, Jorik had immediately grabbed his rifle, fled his post and spent the following battle hidden in one of the many hidey-holes as Rorguten's forces were over-run by the superior numbers of the Chaos Marines.

In actually fact, Jorik's actions hadn't been cowardice, but a side effect of his training (though Jorik had no illusions about how the recently deceased Commissar Yelfron would have acted, regardless of the reason). Jorik's training had lead to instincts of finding cover, choosing shots carefully, and remaining hidden. Besides, given that standard tactical doctrine called for a minimum 10-to-1 advantage for the Guard, sticking around for a battle where the 10-to-1 advantage was with the _enemy_ (and a Space Marine enemy force at that) was a definite no-no.

The proof of this was that, after three days, Jorik was still alive despite being deep behind enemy lines and had killed 23 Iron Warrior marines and a tank (when a marine he had shot had convulsively squeezed the trigger of his rocket launcher and sent a rocket into the open hatch of a Rhino).

Jorik carefully shifted his rifle round and focused in on a bareheaded sergeant, zooming in on the eight-pointed star carved into his forehead.

_"God-Emperor,"_ Jorik murmured, beginning the Litany of Accuracy,

"_Guide the flight,_

_Watch the target,_

_Take the unworthy's life."_ He pulled the trigger on his rifle. The high-power las shot flashed instantly through the air, and took the top of the head off the Chaos marine sergeant.

Jorik ducked down behind the balcony instantly, and began to move crab-legged across the floor, towards the door and the ruined staircase on the other side when a sudden engine roar made him pause. Jorik hesitated, and slid back over to the balcony edge, ignoring the small voice in the back of his mind that insisted it was a bad idea.

Jorik peeped over the edge of the baloney…and knew instantly that he should have listened to his initial impulse and ran for it. There was a tank trundling into the square in front of the balcony, one which Jorik recognized as a Space Marine Vindicator as it turned towards him.

"Oh…" Jorik gulped, ignoring the faint booming noises overhead as yet another ship, no doubt yet another Chaos transport, began landing. "The Emperor protects…"

He wasn't sure whether he meant it as a prayer or a curse.

The tank fired.

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For a second, Shinji hung in the air…

Then gravity re-exerted it's claim on him and he began to plummet towards the ground. Shinji clenched his fists instinctively, straining at the g-forces hitting him. Over to his side, he could see Asuka falling next to him, as well as a couple of large-scale cases containing a couple of Eva-scaled weapons.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, although it could only have been a few minutes, the jet pack on his back roared into life. Based on the design of the Astartes jump pack, it was a one-shot system intended only to get the Eva to ground safely; long-term comfort and endurance were very much minor considerations.

It took only a few seconds for the jet pack to slow Shinji's fall, despite the several lightning strikes as they hit the dark cloudbank.

Barely 50 meters from the ground, the pack finally shut down, clamps automatically retracting as explosive charges forced the pack away from the Eva. Shinji hit the ground in a crouch, bracing himself on his arms and knees.

Shinji looked up to examine his surroundings, just in time to receive a Vindicator round to the face.

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Shinji flinched, which was fairly noticeable on a 20-story war-machine, and instinctively grabbed an especially large chunk of rubble from the many piles lying around. The red figure of Unit 02 strode over, and casually picked something up.

"Don't worry Baka," Asuka said, "I doubt it can really bite." She casually crushed the metal colored Vindicator in her hand and tossed it towards one of the fleeing Chaos squads.

"Well," Shinji muttered as he reached back over his shoulder and pulled a Bolt pistol (although calling a gun that fired rocket-propelled, explosive projectiles the size of a human a 'pistol' was stretching the term) out of his right-hand shoulder fin, "when something unexpectedly shoots you in the face, you tend to panic first and ask questions later." He aimed, and fired, blowing a Predator into pieces. "Any sign of the… whatever-it-was that Thorne warned us about?"

"Nope," Asuka replied, pulling a large chain-axe out of one of the cases, "but there's a Titan at the edge of the spaceport, and it seems to be heading this way. Keep this lot off my back, and leave it to me."

"It's all yours," Shinji muttered, picking up a fuel tank and tossing it towards the Iron Warriors massing a couple of hundred meters away.

It made a fairly satisfying bang when it hit.

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Asuka drifted into another shadow and froze still as another sensor sweep swept past. The Titan moved on, the oddly organic limbs flexing impatiently as it slowly strode towards the purple figure of Unit 01 as Shinji carefully disabled or destroyed anything powerful enough to threaten the slowly decending _Warrior's Chariot_.

It occasionally seemed odd to Asuka that an Evangelion could actually sneak up on something. A twenty-story, bright red war machine that makes the ground shake when it moves, _should_ be obvious to even the most dim-witted soldier. Yet in many circumstances, it _was_ actually possible.

The present was a case-in-point; Shinji was making enough noise and destruction to easily distract the smaller forces, the dark storm was blocking most of the sun's light so Unit 02 armor wasn't glowing with reflected light and some of the upgrades that the Evas had gone through included the same kind of stealth systems that were put into Titans (obviously nothing visual, but systems that, e.g. partially neutralized the Eva's appearance on long-range sensors like radar).

_It's just moving past now, on the other side of the building_, Kyoko whispered into the back of Asuka's mind.

"Right…" Asuka carefully hefted the chain-axe, and prepared to spring.

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"Hey, Baka," Asuka called over the Comm. as Shinji shot the last of the Basilisk cannons.

"Yeah?" Shinji glanced up in the general direction of the slowly moving Titan, trying to spot Unit 02.

"Do you know what my favorite 20th century horror film was back in Germany?"

"No…"

"The _Texas Chainsaw Massacre_!" Asuka shouted as she appeared behind the Titan, swinging the chain-axe up between the Titan's legs in a move that caused Shinji to wince (though he wasn't sure if it was because of the attack, or the poor pun). The axe ground it's way halfway through the pelvis, before Asuka pulled it back out.

"Was that strictly necessary?" Shinji asked.

"Yep. Don't you remember the schematics I got Magi Orgenati to show us? The main servos for the waist and the hips are in the pelvis; so it's effectively immobilized." Asuka carefully moved round the Titan's right side, grabbing and snapping off the massive cannon on it's right arm as it tried to traverse to hit her. She lifted the chain-axe over her head, and dropped it in the exposed neck of the disabled Titan. The head fell, crumpling as it hit the ground.

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_I think I've found something_, Yui muttered into the back of Shinji's mind as the _Warrior's Chariot_ began to discharge Warlord Titans from it's sides into the grounds of the half-ruined spaceport. _There's something, two somethings in fact, moving towards the spaceport. Large enough to cause tremors, but the radar image doesn't match anything from the data-files from the Adeptus Mechanicus. Have a look_.

Shinji felt his mind merge with Yui's, in a way that was rapidly becoming second nature.

Shinji/Yui examined the data for a few seconds, before deciding that Yui's original guess was accurate; there were two Eva-like machines heading in from the North-East. Shinji peeled himself back off Yui's thought processes

"Ah… Unit 01 to _Warrior's Chariot_," Shinji said, triggering the Comm. system.

_Warrior's Chariot_ here Unit 01, go ahead+

"I've picked up something on my sensors heading this way, it may be the machine we were deployed here to fight. Do I have permission to check.

Hold one Unit 01+ Several seconds passed before the channel opened again. +The Inquisitor says that you and Unit 02 should go and investigate. We'll hold back the Titans until we have a sufficient number deployed to garentee the ship's safety; if we lose the _Warrior's Chariot_, there's no escape+

"Roger _Warrior's Chariot_." Shinji flipped the channel. "Did you hear that?"

"Yeah," Asuka replied, "Let's go."

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Shinji moved cautiously past the skyscraper-sized habs, waiting as Yui tried to re-locate the target. The two targets had split up, forcing Shinji and Asuka to split up after them, then, strangely, they had vanished off the screen.

_Nothing here,_ Yui murmured. _They must have moved…_ The hab block on Shinji's left exploded as a dark figure leapt for him, two sets of talons outstretched.

Shinji jumped sideways and _almost_ made it. A stab of pain shot into his shoulder as the left shoulder fin parted from the arm.

Shinji stood back up, examining the thing, and shuddered slightly. It was an Eva, structurally similar to Unit 01, although the protruding horn seemed to be twisted bone. The armor was painted black, and seemed to resemble a piece of carved scrimshaw; interlocking loops, whirls and strange symbols all seemed to have be carved into the armor. A massive Chaos star was painted on it's chest in what, Shinji feared, was dried blood. Although it didn't seem to have any guns, it's hands had been replaced with a pair of over-sized lightning claws.

The Chaos Eva opened it's fists, revealing long, sharp claws crackling with the energy of a power field, and charged.

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Shinji desperately tried to duck and stumble back as the Chaos Eva slashed at his head with one claw and his abdomen with the other. Fortunately, neither strikes did any real damage, the latter gouging shallow slices in the armor while the later missed completely.

Shinji grabbed a building for stability with one hand while bringing up his Vulcun Bolter. A trail of explosions stitched it's way across the legs of the Chaos Eva causing it to howl in rage as it collapsed under the barrage. Shinji quickly shifted his aim, trying to hit the head-

The Chaos Eva screamed in fury and leaped up from it's knees, slashing hard. The front half of the bisected Bolter flew into a nearby building, causing it to collapse.

As the face of the Chaos Eva filled the screen Shinji instinctively dropped the Bolter and shot out his free hand to grab one of it's wrist while scrabbling for the progressive knife sticking out from the remains of the left shoulder fin.

"Asuka, I could use some help!" he shouted.

"I'm a little-damn! Stop dodging you little-!" she replied, the sound of heavy gunfire evident a few streets over.

"Damn," Shinji hissed, desperately bringing the vibrating blade, now hissing with the energy of its own newly added power field, up just in time to block another slice by the lightning claw.

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Shinji hissed in pain as he missed another one of the slashes, LCL slowly leaking from the resulting gash. Despite the difference in weaponry, Unit 01 was proving to be faster and stronger then it's adversary, which was more or less holding the fight to a draw, with neither Eva showing more then slight wounding.

Suddenly a hailstorm of firepower slashed across from a sidestreet, blasting the Chaos Eva into a skyscraper.

"Wha…" Shinji looked over, to see a Warlord Titan, _Imperious Gladius_, charging in from the side, Turbo-lasers and a gatling cannon firing into the hole in the building as fast as the auto-loaders could keep reloading.

The firestorm continued for several seconds, before the weapons fell silent.

_Imperius Gladius_ to Unit 01. The target is destroyed. Move to the other Eva's position. We'll support you+

"I…" Shinji hesitated. "I'm not sure it was destroyed. That seemed too e…" The street shuddered. And then exploded.

The figure of the Chaos Eva erupted from the ground in front of _Imperious Gladius_. It's amour was badly cracked, many parts missing completely, and a baleful eye glared out from the shattered remains of it's helmet. But the disguise was gone now. Bare muscles strained between the fragmented plates. Aborted bat wings drooped from it's exposed back. It's flesh may have been that of an Eva, but now it was most defiantly a daemon.

Curled talons snatched at the massive bulk of _Imperious Gladius_, ripping into armor plates as if they were cloth. Then, with strength seemingly impossible for an Eva's sparse frame, the abomination tore _Imperious Gladius_ in two. The remains of the ancient war machine hung from the beast's claws for a second, before the ruptured Genarium erupted in a fireball that engulfed the daemon-thing. The last thing Shinji felt was being flung all the way down the street.

Then everything went dark

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Shinji blinked his way back to consciousness, just in time to see the daemon leap from the still smoking crater. He quickly brought his arms up and managed to grab the creature's arms barely in time to stop it's claws reaching his throat. Shinji felt the coil of anger inside him that had been winding tighter since he had first landed on Bar-El finally spring back out.

Screaming in anger, Shinji pulled back an arm and punched as hard as he could. He felt armor giving way under the blow, and then the queasy sensation of a fist passing through flesh. Then he felt his goal, the thin, long cylinder of an entry plug. Ignoring old memories, Shinji opened his hand, grabbed the plug, and pulled hard.

Fragile technology gave way under the irresistible tug. Tough muscles and semi-organic tendons ripped under the strain. Then, in a blast of gore, Shinji ripped the shattered entry plug from the body of the daemon-Eva.

Shinji stepped back, letting the daemon-Eva collapse, before glancing at the shattered remains of the LCL covered entry plug in his hand. He had been expecting a flash of blue or white hair, but the body amongst the fragments didn't even have hai…

Shinji felt his mind shudder to a stop.

It wasn't the fact that the body ended in a web of shattered pipes and wires below the torso. It wasn't the implants and machinery that punctured the cloned body. It was the fact that, despite the pipes and wires, despite the white, never-seen-sun-before skin, despite the glaring red optic and the metal probes sticking out of the exposed brain…

…it had Shinji's face.

To be Continued…

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Commissar; Officially a political officer intended to support the common soldiers and improve their morale. In actual fact, most guardsmen find Commissars more terrifying then the enemy, and hence fight hard, not to destroy the enemy but to get away from the Commissar. In a major engagement, Commissars tend to be responsible for between one to ten percent of Guard fatalities.

Litany of Accuracy; One of many Litanies from the 'Imperial Guardsman's Uplifting Primer'. Supposedly summons the Emperor's assistance in combat. Unreliable.

Vindicator; Based on a Rhino chassis, a Vindicator is an indirect fire support tank intended as heavy support.

Lightning claws; A set of blades protruding from a power fist with an integrated power field. Has a similar penetration to other power weapons, but much lighter, and hence, faster.


	6. Chapter 5

Author's note

This pretty much marks the half-way point of the story.

Unfortunately, I have University exams coming up in a few weeks, meaning that I may be delayed in releasing further chapters; although I have many of the most important scenes written up, actually adding the connections between the scenes takes up time so…

Regardless, as soon as the exams are done, this gets total priority. And, at least I finished with a bang.

Yoshomo; Yes, Jorik did live as Unit-01 intercepted the shot. As for what happened to him after though… Well, we'll see.

imperial guardsman; Technically the servitor didn't actually run the eva… but that'll all be explained later anyway. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter.

melgar; It wasn't just a daemon eva, it was a daemon eva powered by the souls of an entire planet! And Titan tend to fair poorly in close-combat with similarly sized daemons as shown by the graphic novel TITAN; Cold Steel.

nick2951; I'm glad you liked the previous chapter. Enjoy this one!

As always criticism and advice is welcome, flamers will discover that their mothers have been replaced with Callidus agents from the Officio Assassinorum.

**Chapter 5**

_The world of Bar-El, Manufactorium 128-b_

Inquisitor Lord Thorne stood on the balcony that ran along the inside of the main manufactorium nearest the spaceport as Orgenati and his tech-priests and servitors from the Warrior's Chariot scurried over the corpses of the recently deceased daemon-things, reminding Thorne of a hive of Carrion-ants stripping a dead carcass.

"Well?" he asked, turning to the skull-drone hovering nearby.

A MOST… UNUSUAL CREATION+++ the inset Vox-ponder replied, relaying Orgenati's voice from the beast below.

THERE ARE A FEW ITEMS OF INTEREST. THE 'PILOT' SEEMS TO BE GENETICALLY IDENTICAL TO PILOT IKARI, BUT IT ALSO SHOWS GENETIC SCARRING TYPICAL OF VAT-GROWN CLONES. SIMILARLY, THE EVANGELION HAS A GENETIC MATCH WITH UNIT 01, AND SHOWS SIMILAR SCARING. THE TECH-PRIESTS EXAMINING THE OTHER CORPSE TELL ME THEY HAVE SIMILAR FINDINGS+++

"Which means…"

HONESTLY… I'M NOT SURE. THEY SEEM TO BE BASED ON UNIT 01 ONLY, WHICH MAY BE AN ADVANTAGE, DEPENDING ON WHETHER 02 MIGHT BE CAPABLE OF SOMETHING THAT 01 ISN'T. THE HUMAN PARTS SEEM TO BE NOTHING MORE THEN SERVITORS SERVING AS A CONNECTION, THE REAL PILOT IS THE 'SOUL' INSIDE THE EVA. IT'S STILL A WEAK POINT WE COULD USE THOUGH. THE MOST PERTINENT POINT, HOWEVER, IS THAT THEY ARE ESSENTIALLY UNMODIFIED+++

"You mean they don't have the changes you installed?"

AFFIRMATIVE. DISREGARDING ANY DAEMONIC POWERS, OUR EVAS ARE BETTER ONE-ON-ONE, ESPECIALLY AT LONG RANGE WHERE THE ARCH-ENEMY'S CREATIONS HAVE LITTLE CAPABILITY TO RETURN FIRE. WITH THE POWERS, HOWEVER… REGARDLESS, THERE IS LITTLE MORE I CAN DO IN THE FIELD. I RECOMMEND THAT WE SUMMON A TRANSPORT TO GET THESE REMAINS BACK TO NEMISIS TESSARA FOR STUDY+++

"I'm not sure if I can justify transporting such obviously corrupt material to Nemisis Tessara for long-term research at present, not if the Eye is opening up again. Anything you can't find out here and now is something we will just have to do without."

_The bridge of the _Or'es Gharial For'tani_, on route to the Segmentum Obscurus_

O'Lusha stared at the inside of the closed armor shielding covering the viewing ports of the _Gharial_-class Light Cruiser _Or'es Gharial For'tani_, formally the _Or'es Tash'var_ several Tau'cyr ago over the planet of Dolmur IV.

This ship, and those of the rest of the flotilla (which was holding in a _very_ close cluster that was linked together by high-powered laser-comm), a full third of the entire Kor'vattra, were the first Tau Ships ever to properly enter the trans-dimensional form of space that the gue'la knew as the Warp.

"Come three degrees to juntas," the voice that worried O'Lusha the most said.

To an impartial observer, such as a gue'la, the figure of the newly promoted Shas'ui T'au Kais sitting at the main navigation console was a perfectly normal Tau. Calm, controlled, focused, the only strange note was the slight distance the other Tau maintained around him.

But O'Lusha was not an impartial observer. Ui'Kais's body language was very controlled, even for the highly focused Tau. O'Lusha kept having the worrying thought that Ui'Kais was controlling his body language so rigidly because he had little control over anything else in his body, or worse mind.

A Tau's eye was a white ball with a thin red line of a pupil. Admittedly, without the muscular structure of a gue'la iris, it was slow to focus, but it could see into a larger rage of the electromagnetic spectrum then most other races seemed capable of.

Which meant that O'Lusha could literally _see_ the strange, barely understood but immense, energies flowing into and out of Ui'Kais's head.

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_Craftworld Ulthwé, Chamber of the Court of the Seer Council_

Farseer Dairuthér opened his eyes and stared at the scattered runes floating in front of him, letting the vision slowly fade from his mind's eye. He was the youngest and the most radical of the council, yet the Staff of Ulthima rested in his hand (given by Eldrad Ulthran himself during the 13th Crusade before his ill-fated trip to the corrupted Talisman of Vaul) and the leaders of the Ulthwé Craftworld waited respectfully for him to speak.

Dairuthér let his hand drift into the complex dance of the floating runes, and cupped a single rune spinning at it's heart.

The rune of Yigmar. Face down.

The rune represented the star-god of death, the C'tan termed crudely as the Deathbringer that had scarred the psyches of virtually all races. Face up, it would have represented the C'tan itself. Face down, however, it had only one meaning; death. An all too common occurrence in the present day.

Yet it had never occurred like this. The rune of Yigmar had always danced with the runes of the races that would be affected; the mon'keigh, the krork, the other millions of races that inhabited the galaxy. Alone… The only possible meaning could be that it would come to all races equally.

"It is clear," Dairuthér finally murmured. "The fallen mon'keigh once again march on the Imperium, and this time they will not hold." His eyes rose to the three runes spiraling together through the pattern, always holding the same triangle. "If we do not stand as one, we all shall fall.

"Muster the dyann-kionash, and make haste," the Farseer continued coming to his feet. "Time and destiny hang in the balance. We go to war." The council marched out, leaving the runes fall to the table one by one. The last to fall were the three runes of the Eldar, mon'keigh and Tau still circling around each other as the wraith-bone door slide shut.

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_Cadia System, 'The Gateway to Hell', Segmentum Obscurus_

Cadia.

Gateway to the Eye of Terror.

Stronghold of mankind.

Humanity's strongest bastion against the darkness.

Thousands of Imperial Guardsmen held its surface against the enemy. Dozens of Space Marine squads from a dozen Chapters continually moved from here to there on it's surface, constantly hitting the scattered Chaos forces at their weak points. Dozens of Titans strode into war, smashing the armies that threatened it.

A beacon of light to all of the Imperium in these dark times.

And now, as the last of the Imperial Navy ships in system burned or fled from Abaddon's newly unleashed armada, totally defenseless.

Abaddon stared at the planet hanging in the viewscreen of the Planet Killer, and smiled grimly.

"Bring us to firing range," he said.

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The Planet Killer settled into orbit over Cadia, the scattered Navy incapable of moving back in to force the ship and it's immense escort away from the planet. Flickers of light occasionally spat up from the ground as the remaining ground based defenses and more powerful Titans tried to drive the fleet away, but the entire force escorting the Planet Killer into orbit consisted of battleships and their shields blocked the feeble shots contemptuously. Cadia had withstood too much; time and again the planet and it's people had turned away the forces of Chaos, now they huddled within bunkers, turning terrified eyes to the shadows in the sky.

Lightning crackled along the pylons of the ship's main cannon, fluxuations greater then the total power output of any of its immense escorts burning out their sensors. Within the immense ring that lay behind the main cannon, ancient devices gathered a sphere of pure warp energy into the containment systems, the multicolored glow visible clear across the entire system.

Finally, the weapon discharged. A sold beam of plasma energy reached down from the Planet Killer and slammed into the planet's crust, burning through it in a matter of seconds. A column of lava erupted a hundred kilometers into the air from the wound, enclosing the intense plasma beam.

Even in it's death throes, Cadia managed to claim the lives of some of the enemy, as mountain sized shrapnel smashed two Battlecruisers into rubble.

The beam stabbed down through the mantle, and finally reached the core.

Cadia shuddered, splintered…and finally detonated, hurling country-sized chunks of itself into space.

To be Continued…

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Tau'cyr; A Tau period of time. Compares to a human month in time scale.

Dolmur IV; A Mining world developing into a Forge world. The Planetary Governor Severus had a Tau Ethereal kidnapped. The subsequent rescue attempt developed into a full-fledged war between the Tau and the Imperial Guard forces, supported by elements of the Raven's Guard and Ultramarine Space Marines, already on the planet. Unknown to either side, Severus had started the war in order to gain the blood sacrifices necessary to release a captive Greater Daemon. He was nearly successful, but Shas'la Tau Kais and Brother Captain ??? of the Ultramarines managed to prevent the completion of the ritual, at the expense of la'Kais's sanity. described in the novel Firewarrior

Kor'vattra; The name for the whole of the Tau fleet (military and commercial).

Juntas; Tau for right or starboard.

Gue'la; Tau word for human.

Craftworld Ulthwé; A Craftworld is a massive world-ship that the sane remnants of the Eldar race live on, escorted by hundreds of ships as it drifts between the stars. Ulthwé is a Craftworld that does not drift, but remains in the general area of the Cadian Sector, it's population self-declared guardians of the Eye of Terror.

Wraithbone; A psychically active material somehow grown by the Eldar. Forms the basis for virtually all of their technology

Eldrad Ulthran; One of the greatest and most powerful Farseers ever and leader of the Ulthwé Craftworld, Eldrad was last seen traveling to the Blackstone Fortress that was attacking Cadia. It is believed that he perished attempting to stop the construct.

Staff of Ulthima; Eldrad Ulthran's main weapon, staff of office and source of power. Made from pure wraithbone, the staff is capable of tapping into Ulthwé's power and boosting the psychic might of the wielder.

Mon'keigh; Eldar word for human.


	7. Chapter 6

Author's note

Can't talk; exams.

Oh, and does anybody know what the Black Legion's homeworld in the Eye is called?

Yoshomo; I'm certainly glad you enjoyed the story. As for Asuka and Shinji meeting non-humans… not until the next chapter I'm afraid. I hope you enjoy this chapter.

As always criticism and advice is welcome, flamers are requested to report to their nearest Inquisition fortress for… debriefing. Remember, the Inquisition is your friend!

**Chapter 6**

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**

The Galaxy burned.

Weakened by the 13th Crusade, and de-moralized by the destruction of Cadia, the battered forces of the Imperium fought a brave, but ultimately futile, defense in the Cadian Sector.

Under normal conditions such a defense would have slowed the advance nearly to a crawl, despite the fact that nearly ten thousand years worth of constant production had yielded a terrifying number of ships in the Chaos armada. Fortress worlds, defended by millions of ground forces and immense orbital defenses should have held out for months or even years without support.

Every time the armada's forward forces contacted such a world, however, they simply blew a small, highly focused path through the defenses large enough to get a single transport through. The only communication after that point was the psychic screams as one of the Despoiler's Evangelion-clones triggered a reproduction of Third Impact, reducing the planet's standing armies, navel officers, politicians, workers, even servitors to orange LCL.

With only the one team capable of effectively combating the Chaos Evas, the Imperium had been unable to effectively counteract the multiple strikes that Abaddon had used; even as Unit 01 and 02 destroyed a Chaos Eva on the world of Hagorand, the worlds of Habis' World and Tarmain had been crushed.

By now, only a few months after Cadia's death, the Chaos advance had pushed almost all the way into the Segmentum Solar on a straight-line course for Terra. Only one single Fortress world on that path remained in the Segmentum Obscurus.

Exactly as both sides intended.

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Lord Admiral Parol stared out of the curved dome of the flag-bridge of the _Imperial Apocalypse_ class Battleship _Terrible_, flagship of the largest concentration of the Imperial Navy since the founding of the Imperium. It was an amalgamation of virtually every ship remaining in the Segmentum Obscurus Battlegroup, massive donations from both the Ultima and Pacificus forces, as well as every ship from the Segmentum Solar Battlegroup that was to the Galactic north of Terra.

It was an incredible denotation of Imperial power, yet it's very assembly was an indication of the immense failure of the Imperium's responsibility to bottle up the Eye of Terror. The Fortress world of R'lyeh's Might lay nearby, the last fortress world in the Segmentum Obscurus between the remains of Cadia and Terra itself. If Abaddon's forces broke past here, there would be nothing to prevent the Chaos armada from entering the Segmentum Solar.

"So, to conclude," Parol began, turning back to the small group of extremely powerful people sharing the flag-bridge, "how do we stand on known enemy forces?"

"I have quite a few cruiser squadrons scouting the armada," Admiral Andrasen replied. "Unfortunately, their having to dodge some fairly hefty and aggressive advance scouting forces, so the Intel. is a bit spotty. They have confirmed…" Andrasen paused and shook his head. "There has to be more then a thousand battleships in that fleet, and that's a conservative estimate. Honestly, it seems to be on comparison with an entire Segmentum fleet. They're coming fast too, our estimates indicate that they'll be here within the week."

"And they wouldn't be here for months if _someone's_ special forces had been deployed a bit more effectively," rear admiral Ruman snarled, the fear evident under his anger. The room seemed to fall silent in fear as gazes turned to the two of the three non-navel men attending the meeting; hiding fear by blaming others was a fine Navy tradition that fooled no one, but only the most foolish or the most petrified would dare attack the Inquisition in such a manner. Inquisitor Lord Thorne and Tech-Magi Orgenati returned their gazes calmly.

"Our operations were planned to the best of our ability," Thorn replied, with only a hint of steel in his voice, "and I remind all of you that we have had a successful combat record approaching 100 percent. Of the Chaos forces we have engaged, all have been destroyed. It's mostly the twin facts of slow warp travel and communication, as well as the fact that the Chaos forces kept attacking several places at once that allowed the arch-enemy to bypass our Evangelions. And I remind you; the Inquisition has confirmed that there were only twelve Eva's deployed, and we destroyed the last of them four days ago on Torrione IV." Ruman breathed in to reply, but never got the chance to speak.

"I suspect," the slightly musical voice of the third non-navel, and indeed non-human, person interrupted, "that there are a few better subjects for us to discuss then this. Tactical options for example?" Dairuthér, Farseer of the Ulthwé craftworld fleet, calmly let his gaze drift across the table.

_Damn Xenos_, Parol growled to himself as the shouting match stopped before it could start. Under normal circumstances, it would take a shout from the Lord Admiral to stop an argument of that scale, but the Farseer seemed capable of doing the same with a single, unearthly glance. _It's not surprising that the Inquisition doesn't trust them, they're so damn creepy._

"Well…" Parol began, "our weapons and ships seem to be stronger then yours, both in terms of our weapons and physical strength, although you do seem to have a higher degree of speed and agility. Perhaps we could…"

"My Lords!" an ensign shouted from one of the stations lining the walls. "The bridge reports a large spatial distortion at the main jump point." Parol immediately came to his feet.

"Locus, size and type?" he snapped out.

"Right in the middle of the main warp-jump point, Sir. We're reading at least a thousand sources, probably more but we can't focus properly at this range. They're coming in very slowly though, barely a kilometer a minute; they're virtually drifting. The entry pattern is strange too, it doesn't match any known Imperial, traitor or Xenos pattern."

"Sir!" another ensign, this time at the main vox-comm. station, called out. "We're receiving a hail from the unknown force!" Parol hesitated, glancing back at the other officers, before nodding.

"Put it up on the main Pict screen." The massive Pict screen, large enough to cover an entire wall of the flag-bridge and surrounded by various cherubs, gargoyles and shrines, flickered to life. A blue skinned xenos, dressed in strangely colored and shaped clothes, flickered slowly into view.

_That's… a Tau_, Parol thought, remembering the general tactical briefing on the Segmentum Ultima. _I thought they were focused in the Eastern rim. What are they doing here?_

"Nobel warriors of the Imperium," the Tau began, speaking in nearly flawless High Gothic. "We come to parlay with you…and offer our assistance."

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"Nobel warriors of the Imperium," Por'el Vash'ya Kor'tar said while Kais watched silently. "We come to parlay with you…and offer our assistance."

"You wish to assist us? What makes you think we need your 'assistance', Xeno?" the gaudily dressed gue'la Admiral on the screen replied guardedly.

"We have our reasons," El'Kor'tar replied, not even glancing at Kais, "but I suspect the most compelling reason is that you have gathered a fleet of such an enormous size and no doubt similar strength, yet in complete opposition to what we believe Imperial Policy to be, you were willing to talk to us rather then simply open fire. This implies that you intend to fight a battle so large, you to not wish to risk loosing further units before it begins. Hence, I wish, again, to offer our assistance."

The Admiral paused, apparently studying the screen for a few moments, before turning away to glance at a gue'la behind him in battered armor. The only unique thing about him that Kais could make out was a strange skull-like icon on his chest.

"I believe the term is; in for an Eagle, in for an Emperor," the gue'la said, apparently referring to the two major denominations of Imperial Credits. The Admiral nodded and turned back to the screen.

"We accept your generous offer," he said, apparently ignoring several hisses and indrawn breaths behind him. "I assume you will wish to send a delegation to organize…"

Kais let his attention drift away as the two sides began debating. The terms didn't matter. They were only…

_Blood rained down from the sky as cackling daemons flapped from tower to tower and the gue'la hive slowly drowned in blood…_

_Cancerous growths sprouted from the wraithbone floor, grabbing and crushing the remaining Eldar, sucking their souls into the gleeful maw of __Slannesh …_

_The last Shas'la, defiant to the end, slumped to the ground. There was absolute silence as Kais strode forward and stabbed a banner, adorned with powerful symbols that burned the eyes, through the corpse, claiming the blood-soaked land of T'au for his Chaos masters…_

Kais forced the images down again, and glanced around, making sure that the mask he had perfected during the voyage hadn't slipped. When sanity, of a sort, had returned during the scream that had cut through the insanity cloaking his mind, he had been foolish enough to think that his mont'au had been slain. He had been wrong; and the hallucinations had been getting stronger. Even the purity of an Aun wasn't suppressing it anymore.

Only three things helped. The first had been (then) El'Lusha's words back on Dolmour IV; "No one ever promised the path would be easy". The second had been the only message Kais ever had from his father, O'Shi'ur.

_My son,_

_No expansion without equilibrium._

_No conquest without control._

_Pursue success in serenity_

_And service to the tau'va._

_With pride._

_Shas'o Ta'au Shi'ur_

Those words were practically engraved into Kais' mind by mixtures of bitter hatred, sour resentment and tortured pride. Written by his father Shas'o T'au Shi'ur, a hero of the Tau, one of their mightiest warriors, and given to Kais by O'Shi'ur on their only meeting, on Kais' birthday.

The third, however, was the strangest. During the horrific screams as worlds died, a single, strange voice had broken through the madness. It had quietly told Kais that the daemon on Dolmour IV had forced open Kais's mind, and hence turned him into the first, only and probably last, Tau psyker.

The voice had also warned him of a massive crusade of evil spreading into the galaxy, requested him to bring the Tau to this world and told him how to use the 'Astronomicon' to navigate the Warp for 'the greatest battle since the Heresy'.

The voice had refused to identify itself, but its ability to create an ocean of calm in the midst of the insanity made it seem, to Kais, like a manifestation of the Greater Good. It had installed him with purpose, but in a way, that purpose had been one of the greater threats to his sanity. While part of him was focused on holding back the darkness described to him, another part, deep within his soul wanted equally strongly to travel there, to fight and kill again.

_I'm not here for war and bloodshed, _Kais insisted to himself_, I'm here because it's the right thing to do, for the Greater Good! For both the Tau and the galaxy!_

Deep inside his mind, Kais felt something dark cackle in amusement.

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Alright Pilot Ikari+++ the low-level Tech-Priest running the test said +++Everything is checking out; the replacement armor plating and sensor array is fully integrated. We'll end the test shortly and prepare to move down to R'lyeh's Might tomorrow morning+++

"Roger," Shinji replied, reaching back with his bionic arm and pulling the mind impulse plugs from the back of his neck as Yui and Unit 01 faded out of his mind. The Entry plug shifted as the armor plating retracted and began to slide up out of the socket. The hatch hissed open and Shinji slowly pulled himself up out of the slowly draining LCL, his arms stiff with fatigue.

"You know," a female voice groaned from the adjacent cage, "given that these M.I.U things gives us constant 100 percent synch ratios, you'd think we wouldn't have to take these schisse synch tests anymore." Shinji glanced over, just in time for a towel to hit him in the face. He took the time to wipe the LCL out of his eyes before lowering it. Asuka was standing on an adjacent walkway, tiredly dragging another towel through her hair in a, probably futile, attempt to dry the LCL out of it.

"Technically," Shinji replied in a 'devils advocate' voice as they reached the gantries along the wall, "it's not a synch test, just a test to ensure the repairs work." They waited as the Tech-Priest studied the results, before he casually waved them along.

Shinji felt bone tired, and it wasn't just from the late test. Over the past few months the_ Warrior's Chariot _and it's crew had been deployed on dozens of worlds throughout the Cadia Secoter and beyond. Shinji and Asuka had been almost constantly fighting the vanguard of the Chaos forces, spiced up by the occasional, incredibly tough to kill, Chaos Eva (in fact, on Garmaine's Hammer, home world of the 'Eagles of Justice' Space Marine Chapter, they had faced five simultaneously. That had been a bad battle; two of the Chaos Evas had been destroyed and the others had eventually fled, but it had taken nearly three weeks for both 01 and 02 to regenerate the massive damage, even with the S2 organs).

When they hadn't been fighting, they had been traveling the Warp, and something about that form of travel felt horribly unnatural. Shinji's mind had insisted that they were only one step away from disaster every second of transit, and that, combined with the nightmares he always seemed to get during Warp travel, had made his sleep very…

Shinji's train of thought slammed to a halt, as his head erupted with a sudden headache. Shinji barely noticed Asuka clutching her own head as his legs began to collapse.

Shinji was unconscious before he even hit the decking.

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Shinji blinked, as he suddenly became aware of his surroundings. It was white nothing, he was floating in completely empty…

"By the Throne, what is this?" Shinji blinked as he turned around, before realizing as he did so, that it should be technically impossible with nothing to push against. Behind him, stood Thorne, staring around in shocked surprise.

"I don't know," Shinji replied. Before Thorne could say anything else, other people shimmered into view; Asuka, Jaroin, Orgenati and Carnarmire (reassigned before Nemisis Tessara's destruction as the _Warrior's Chariot_'s Astropath). It was several seconds before the questions and shouts calmed down.

"So does anybody know what's going on?" Thorne finally growled.

"Well," Shinji hesitated, "it does kind of feel like when me and Asuka were absorbed into our Evas…"

"It's basically like a dream," Asuka interrupted, seeing the confused faces on the others. "Though I've no idea how we got here."

"That would be my fault." Shinji spun around, and found himself staring at a very familiar face. His face was, apart from the red optic inset into his right eye socket, completely unchanged from the first time Shinji saw him, within the throne room of the Imperial Palace, ten thousand years ago during the Horus Heresy.

"M-my Lord, my Emperor!" Carnarmire gasped, sagging to his knees. There was a metallic noise as Thorne pulled out and brandished his power sword before him.

"Who are you," he growled suspiciously.

"The Astropath, Carnarmire, is absolutely correct," the figure replied, "I am the Emperor. I'm sure Shinji and Asuka can vouch for me too, if you really need it."

"It is him," Shinji agreed, Asuka nodding in agreement. Thorne shook his head.

"How can I be sure you aren't some kind of daemon taking that form to trick us?"

"Carnarmire is proof enough. As with all Astropaths, he was bonded with my soul on Terra. He could not be fooled by a daemon." Thorne hesitated, lowering his sword and glancing between the Emperor and the prostrate Carnarmire. Then he dropped to his knees.

"Forgive my fears my L…"

"Oh, get up. If everyone here starts praying, apologizing and everything else, we'll be here for hours. I'm entering your minds to give you orders, not to see your worship. Time's too short for that."

"So… why are you showing yourself to us?" Asuka asked, curiosity evident in her voice.

"I have a stratagem that should turn back this tide," the Emperor replied. "Virtually all of the Traitor forces are advancing into the Segmentum Solar, leaving their rear virtually undefended. In a few hours, a Battlebarge will arrive a your location. It will contain two full companies of Grey Knights, as well as the best Astronavigators on Terra and the charts you will need. When it arrives, you must leave the rest of the fleet and circle around the archenemy's forces, and enter the Eye of Terror. There you must find the fortress world of the Black Legion. Get Unit 01 and 02 there, once that is done I will tell you the rest."

"WHAT?! That's it!? We charge into hell with nothing more then 'get Unit 01 there and wait'?"

"I can not tell you more now," the Emperor replied, shrugging, "within the Eye of Terror, your thoughts are too easily read; the foe may find a way to stop you. You have my orders, go."

The figures vanished, leaving the white mindscape empty aside from the Emperor, who closed his remaining eye.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, and vanished too, leaving the mindscape to decompose silently.

To be continued…

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Hagorand, Habis' World and Tarmain; Worlds within the Imperium. No other information is available.

R'lyeh's Might; A heavily defended world on the edge between the Segmentums Obscurus and Solar. Built over the oddly angled ruins of an ancient and extinct race.

Battlebarge; The largest warship used by the Adeptus Astartes. More or less equivalent to a Navy battlecruiser in size and power, it is intended not as a line holding ship, but as a 'blockade runner' to smash past the foe and drop it's passengers onto the target.


	8. Chapter 7

Author's note

Whew!

Well, the exams are finally over! Now I just have to wait until the results arrive. Regardless, now that my work is finally over for the year, I will be focusing a lot more attention on this story. I won't make any promises on updating quicker (my inspiration has been a little spotty lately), but I will do my best to finish as quickly as I can.

Oh, and Rule 37 of _Standard Imperial Tactics_ is based on Rule 37 of _The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates_ from the Webcomic _Schlock Mercenary_ (http / www . schlockmercenary . com / index . html) by Howard Taylor. I strongly recommend it.

TenWings; The Tau are probably one of the only races that would actually _offer_ to help the Imperium (especially if they believe that they can use it to push the Imperium closer to accepting the Greater Good). I'm glad you enjoyed the story and I'll try to update soon.

nick2951; I assure you, the Emperor's plan will be revealed in time. As I said, I'll try to update soon.

Yoshomo; The Emperor is definatly still around; many Imperial technologies and practices (such as the Astronomican and the Imperial Tarot) only work because of the Emperor's power. Also, in the novel 'Eye of Terror' (which also describes the Imperiums single leap into the Eye of Terror mentioned in this story) the Emperor averts a Chaos crusade by using his powers to move a single space marine into the Eye.

melgar; I'm afraid I don't know who Malla is, so sorry but no.

As always criticism and advice is welcome, flamers will be sent to the front line on Armageddon.

**Chapter 7**

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"Please, tell me you're joking," Lord Admiral Parol said finally, staring into Inquisitor Lord Thorne's eyes. They were both sitting in the main meeting chamber, along with _Terrible_'s higher officers, the Eldar Farseer and his escort and several representatives from the Tau fleet, at a meeting that Thorne had called barely half an hour after the mid-night cycle bell.

"No, an Inquisitor never jokes about something so important," Thorne replied calmly.

"Let me get this straight," Parol said, lifting a data-slate he had been taking notes on. "On the basis of a dream, you intend to take two of the most powerful war machines in the Imperium, a Battlebarge with two companies of the best daemon fighters in the Imperium, who, supposedly, will arrive here in a few hours, _and_ enough escorting forces to enter the Eye of Terror, something that has never been done before…"

"It is no mere dream, I had a Vox message from the Warrior's Chariot; the pilots, our Astropath and the Tech Magi Orgenati all had the vision too," Thorne interrupted, "and two millennia ago elements of battlefleets Obscurus and Pacificus successfully entered and left the Eye. We had intelligence that the arch-enemy had gathered a immense fleet, and Admiral Drang recommended a preemptive strike on the fleet. The High Lords agreed."

"So it has been done before," Parol admitted. "How successful was it?"

"Very. They located, engaged and destroyed the enemy fleet in it's entirety, although we got barely one ship in three back." Thorne shrugged at their horrified expressions. "Success is relative."

"So, you intend to pull all these forces out, invade the Eye of Terror, find the homeworld of the Black Legion… and you don't even know what to do when you get there?" Thorne shock his head. "I suppose the ground forces aren't much of a problem, and the Eva's aren't under my jurisdiction either. Neither are the Grey Knights, so if there is a Battlebarge coming, I guess that's yours too. But I can't allow you to pull the Naval ships you requested from the line."

"_Can't_, Lord Admiral?" Thorne asked quietly.

"It's not a question of whether or not I want to," Parol added hastily, "but even with the Eldar and Tau we barely have parity with the opposing force. Even if you somehow…destroy the Eye or something, their armada will still be here, and we still need to hold them out of the Segmentum Solar. Even one cruiser less could be one too few. I simply can't risk weakening my forces."

"They will not have left the Eye completely unguarded; we'll need _something_ with which to force our way in."

"Force will not be necessary," a musical voice interrupted. Virtually the entire room turned surprised, hostile or curious gazes to Farseer Dairuthér.

"Why? What alternative is there?" Thorne asked.

"The crone world of Eidolon. We reclaimed parts of it from the darkness during the '13 Crusade.'"

"You've got a colony _inside_ the Eye!?" Parol asked, shock and horror coloring his voice.

"Our people have chosen to reclaim our world. It's spirit is battered, but not broken. We will allow no other to claim it's secrets."

"How can this help us?"

"We reopened a major capillary of the Webway to that world. It is large enough to handle a Craftworld…or one your own Battlebarges."

"So… we could be there in days, or even hours _and_ we could circumnavigate the Eye's defenses?" Thorne half asked, half stated. Farseer Dairuthér simply looked at him, body language conveying a message in ways that the human mind wasn't capable of reading. _Damn, arrogant witch,_ Parol growled to himself, half in annoyance. There was a knocking at the door.

"Excuse me, My Lords," an ensign said, walking in.

"Report," Parol said, happy to deal with something other then insane Inquisition plots.

"There was an unscheduled Warp Transit a couple of minutes ago, Sir. It was quickly identified as Imperial and was granted permission to approach the planet. It identified itself as the _Suus Telum_, a Battlebarge under the command of the, ah…" the ensign glanced down at his dataslate and frowned, "the Grey Knights Chapter. They'll arrive in orbit over R'lyeh's Might in a few hours."

Parol fought his sudden urge to groan and shut his eyes, succeeding only with the former.

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Inquisitor Lord Thorne stared out of the bridge of the _Suus Telum_ at the small, oddly matched force assembling in what, as far as the Imperium ships could tell, was empty space.

The _Suus Telum_ was a masterpiece. It was one of the few Battlebarges in the Imperium which had not been constructed after, or even before the Horus Heresy. In fact, a company of Grey Knights had found it attached to a drifting space hulk during a joint mission between the Xenos and Malleus Ordos. Despite it's age (study by the Adeptus Mechanicus later put it's date of construction sometime around M23, during the height of the Dark Age of Technology) it was still functioning. Inquisitor Ulthian had ordered it to be blasted loose and taken to the Malleus ship yard on Iapetus, orbiting Saturn.

More advanced then even the original S.T.C. fragments that had allowed the Imperium to build Battlebarges of their own, the _Suus Telum_ was a smooth, streamlined mass of silver coated armor (inlayed with gold filigree tracing out prayers and complex hexagrammic and pentagrammic runes), gun turrets, engines and landing bays that could outperform virtually any other Astartes vessel in the entire Imperium.

Two squadrons of equally impressive escorts hung to the port and starboard flanks of the _Suus Telum_, squadrons _Hammer_ and _Shield_ respectively, distant starlight winking off their hulls. Thorne nodded to himself, before turning and walking over to the massive Tactical plot in the center of the bridge. The stationary icons placed the rest of the mismatched force behind the _Suus Telum_. The smooth orange-brown bulk of the _Gharial_ (apparently translating into 'Emissary' according to a quick examination of the scant local Inquisition data files on the Tau) class light cruiser _Or'es Gharial For'tani_ hung behind squadron _Hammer_, while the Eldar cruiser _Fhianna Rethol_, what the Imperium referred to as a _Shadow_-class ship, was holding station behind the ships of _Shield_ squadron. Two full squadrons of Navy Destroyers took up the rear, all Lord Admiral Parol felt was safe to slice off his own forces in the face of Abaddon's advance.

And right in the middle of the force, it's energy readings virtually unnoticeable compared to the massive power levels of the surrounding warships, was a single _Harbinger_-class super-heavy transport ship called the _Warrier's Chariot_. The focus of this desperate lunge into the territory of evil.

"My Lords, bond-Captain, all ships report ready for Warp Transit," one of the mind-scrubbed bond-crewmen reported to the three men clustered around the main Tactical plot.

"Understood," the bond-Captain replied.

"I suppose it'll have to do," Thorne muttered, "at last until the Eldar actually tell us _what_ we need to do to prepare."

"All we can do is do our best and trust in the Emperor," the third man replied. Thorne took a moment to study acting brother-Captain Alaric. Inquisitor Nyxos, a extremely important member of the Sol system 's team had sent an message along with the Battle barge, recommending that then-Justicar Alaric should be allowed full control of the Grey Knights forces. Thorne had decided to listen, granting the effective power of an Astartes Captain, if not the actual rank that went with it (such promotions could only be granted from within the Chapter).

"True," Thorne nodded. He turned to one of the crewmen. "Hail the _Fhianna Rethol_ and put the pict image on the tac. plot."

"Aye, My Lord." An image came into focus on the tactical plot, slowly as _Suus Telum_'s machine spirits struggled to make sense of the Xenos format. It finally resolved into the form of Farseer Dairuthér, who stared silently up at them.

"We're ready for Warp jump, so I suspect we are ready to enter the… 'Webway' whenever you are."

"Very well, follow us in," the Farseer replied, before cutting the signal. Thorne turned his attention back to the fleet in time to see the symbol of the _Fhianna Rethol_ shift out and curve around in front of the other vessels. A sudden flash filled the bridge and caused him to look up.

Through the main view screen, a tiny point of white light floated in front of the fleet. As Thorne watched, the distorted shape of the _Fhianna Rethol_ flew round in front of the _Suus Telum_ and approached the light source. Thorne watched closely as the Eldar ship approached the light source.

The _Fhianna Rethol_ came into contact with the point of light, which suddenly began to expand into a ball of light that enclosed the Eldar vessel, before collapsing back to a point. The _Fhianna Rethol_ was gone.

Thorne exchanged a glance with Alaric, who nodded once.

"Bond-captain, bring us into hull contact with that… with _that_."

"Aye sir," the bond-captain replied, before turning to his crew. "Engines, all ahead full. Tactical, seal the external ports and cover the view ports. All hands, brace for possible Warp travel." A meter thick shield slid down over the view port, sealing off the outside universe. Thorne turned his attention back to the holo-table just in time to see the icon representing the _Suus Telum_ come into contact with an 'anomaly' icon, representing the Webway entrance.

A white light seemed to pass through the ship as it vanished from the galaxy.

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_Two days later…_

"Lord Admiral Parol to the flag-bridge! Lord Admiral Parol to the flag-bridge!"

Parol looked up from the latest report and stared at the vox. in surprise and anger. _Damn ensigns, they'll scare half the ship shouting like that. _He stabbed a finger at the vox-ponder on his desk.

"Kill that damn message," he snarled before the ensign on the far end even opened his mouth, "and give me a damn report."

"Sir," the ensign swallowed, and Parol felt is anger drain out of him when the ensign's white face and trembling voice registered. Drained and replaced by something resembling fear. "Sir… I…"

"Calm down and talk to me," Parol said much more quietly.

"I… yes, Sir." The ensign hesitated, breathing deeply a couple of times. "We've received several worrying reports, both within _Terrible_ and from across the fleet. The Astropaths are having fits, half our Navigators have burned out, and those that are left are reporting a massive warp distortion heading straight for us." Parol felt a chill climb up his spine.

"Understood, I'm on my way." He jumped to his feet, simultaneously grabbing his jacket and killing the vox.

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The journey had been extremely unnerving for Thorne and most of the other passengers in the small task force. The light of the Emperor did not reach into this twisted mish-mash of reality and Warp, and _Suus Telum_'s Astropaths had admitted to Thorne just how much of their journey was guess work and luck. The local warp conditions had been even more worrying; eddies, storms, odd temporary anomalies (at least one Navel Destroyer had been out of contact for several hours after arriving at Eidolon, yet it had kept perfect position in the convoy. When it's crew once again came in contact, they claimed that it had only been minutes since they had arrived in the Eye, and their signal time-date stamps agreed with them) and the worst had been a region where the Warp did not exist. The task-force had been flung back into real-space, and for a short time it was believed that they would have to backtrack and find another way around. Then a diligent Tech-priest noted that, although they were in real-space and running on normal ion-drives, they were somehow achieving faster-then-light speeds! They had suddenly leaped back into the Warp again after four light-years, but the intervening time had been nerve-wracking.

In fact, it was the last which scared Thorne the most; the reason the galaxy had so few 'super-powers' and the Imperium could control so much was the fact that very few races could travel long distances. The Imperium, Eldar and Orcs could (though the last was debatable; luck and coincidence seemed to be what allowed the Orcs to transit the Warp) through their Psykers and the Webway (the Tau couldn't, in fact, travel long distances with the exception of the fleet lead by Kais, but their technology was sufficient to give them a high degree of accuracy and they were easily capable of traveling further then most 'pocket' races). If the conditions in the that odd patch of space could be replicated outside the Eye allowing non-Warp F.T.L. travel, then every race with a grievance against humanity…

Thorne shuddered and forced his thoughts away from that topic. He glanced at the bond-crewmen of the _Suus Telum_ almost with jealousy. In order to preserve them from the darkness of Chaos, they had been brainwashed and retrained with treatments that were only a step away from the servitor treatments on criminals; with nothing but duty and faith in their heads not one of them had even so much as flinched from the horrors of this realm.

"Alert," a servitor suddenly said, attracting Thorne's attention. There was a faint echo effect caused by the voice repeating from loudspeakers all over the ship. "30 minutes warning. Re-entering real-space in thirty minutes. All hands report to action stations."

Thorne took a last look around the disturbingly calm and ordered bridge, before striding to a free vox. and tapping in the code for Alaric's rather spartan quarters.

Brother-Captain Alaric here+

"I assume you heard the announcement, Brother-Captain," Thorne said.

Indeed. I've summoned the squads for a final briefing in the main chapel before we move to our stations in the Thunderhawks and drop pods. I assume you will be attending?+

"Yes, I'll be there shortly." Thorne shut off the vox. and headed for the exit, trying to ignore the faint chill that lay along his spine and refused to budge.

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The assembled officers, Tau pilots and Eldar captains, both onboard _Terrible_ and attending through static-distorted vox. signals, stared at their various tactical display in silent horror. The approaching force was large enough that the accompanying warp storms, propelled ahead of the inbound fleet, were beginning to burn through to real space, lacing sensor scans with static and flickers of odd color.

"I thought they would be several days yet," Parol asked, glancing at _Terrible_'s Tech Magi.

THAT DATA WAS BASED ON SEVERAL ASSUMPTIONS FROM PRIOR ENGAGMENTS WITH THIS FORCE+++ the Magi replied. +++BALORIOUS IV SHOULD HAVE HELD THEM OFF FOR SEVERAL DAYS YET. SOME OTHER FACTOR MUST HAVE ALLOWED THEM OR CAUSED THEM TO ADVANCE THER PLANS+++

"Well, no use crying over spilt aquavit I guess. Though… Admiral Andrasen, any idea why your scouts didn't warn us of this." Andrasen's shimmering hologram shrugged.

"My crews knew their job. I'm guessing some kind of ambush… or maybe they simply got too close."

"Hmm." Parol studied the Pict screen for a few minutes before shrugging. "I don't think we have time for anything complex or subtle. Do we have time to get our ships in position for 'First Shot'?"

YES, THE OPPOSING FORCE WILL ARRIVE AT THIS SYSTEMS MAIN JUMP POINT IN 136 MINUTES. AT FULL SPEED, OUR OWN SHIPS CAN ARRIVE AT THE REQUIRED COORDINATES IN ONLY 112+++

"Very well, I think we're going to have to go with 'First Shot'. Anybody have another idea?" There was a chorus of 'no's from the Human and Tau holograms, the Eldar hologram only shook his head slightly. "Very well gentlemen."

Parol held out his hand to the side. His staff officer, used to Parol's habits, was already there holding out a glass of wine. Parol took it and raised it to the aquila mounted over the main Pict screen.

"Gentlemen, the toast is 'Victory'."

The deck began to shudder slightly as the engines went to full power.

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The inside of the Eye of Terror is a twisted mélange of Warp and real space. But, despite how they are mixed and intertwined, the two forms of reality are, for the most part, still separate. Abaddon had, naturally, brought the Black Legions best forces, daemons, warp-scryers and ships with him, leaving his fortress world somewhat under defended. Of course, the other major powers within the Eye had also sent their best forces as well, and no pirate band or mini army could hope to penetrate the remaining defenses. The only force that could have had the strength and competence to penetrate that base was the Imperium, and every Chaos Marine knew that the Imperium would never enter the Eye.

Which is why, when the force lead by the _Suus Telum_ dropped into real space (such as it was), it achieved complete and total surprise.

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"General order to all ships," Parol hesitated, staring at the growing warp distortion on the main screen. Once he gave the command, the largest Naval battle in the known history of the galaxy would begin. "Put your trust in Him. Fire on my mark… _Mark!_"

Every gun port, every grav launcher, every magnetic cannon in the fleet fired at once. Plasma drives fired, propelling 10 meter slabs into space. Gravitic Launchers pulsed, propelling drone controlled missiles into pre-programmed attack patterns. Mysterious Wraithbone launchers bent space itself, flinging torpedoes out of the Eldar ships. Magnetic accelerator cannons dragged Nova shells out of breaches and into the void. Ironically, it was a launch that _Terrible_, with it's sole Nova Cannon, could donate only one shot to, highly powered though it was.

Imperial torpedoes flew through space, smaller Tau, drone-controlled missiles maneuvered around the other ordinance like asteroids around gas giants, shadowy Eldar Wraithbone torpedoes seemed to fade in and out of existence and inert Nova shells plunged along their pre-plotted paths. All of which was focused on a single point in space.

All in all, Operation 'First Shot' was a perfect example of Rule 37 of _Standard Imperial Tactics_; 'Always use the largest amount of overkill possible' (one of the main justifications for Imperial Guard Armored Companies) and Rule 17; 'Keep it _simple_'.

The Chaos fleet ripped it's way back into real space, only to be greeted by a wave of firepower large enough to blot out the sun.

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Burning Chaos ships fell behind the task force as it moved in on the Black Legion's homeworld, having discovered the full horror of the _Suus Telum_'s unique rapid-fire Bombardment Cannon (a trick long since lost the Adaptus Mechanicus).

The _Suus Telum_'s nameless bond-captain studied the tactical plot carefully.

"Bombardment cannon, come to 36 degrees, fire for effect," he said calmly. "Fire torpedoes at that orbital defense position, twenty second fuse."

A series of acknowledgements, accompanied by several shudders, answered him, and the bond-captain watched the plot carefully. He quickly noted the sporadic and poorly aimed defensive fire, and nodded quietly.

"The orbital defenses will not be a problem. Inform the drop pod deck and the landing bays that they can begin insertion in two minutes as we reach the atmosphere. Contact the _Warrior's Chariot_ and advise them of the same. After drop, roll us to port, and commence suppressive fire on the ground batteries."

The nameless bond-captain knew that the most dangerous threat they would see now would be ground-based fire. He watched, waiting to see what form it would take.

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The Chaos fleet had been well prepared for inbound ordinance; even the weakest Astro-navigator could not have possibly missed the exit vector and location of their ships, and nobody competent or bloodthirsty enough to rise to the position of Captain of a Chaos ship would have missed the opportunities that this knowledge presented to the defenders. Every gun was prepared for anti-torpedo fire… but no ship, fleet or armada could be prepared for that hailstorm of firepower.

Lances opened up, followed by rapid-firing point-defense turrets. Hundreds of torpedoes and missiles died, yet it seemed like for every missile that was destroyed, three made it through. Shields flared and died as the first shots hit home, then plasma genariums started to detonate with flashes of light as armor buckled. First singularly, then in groups, the Chaos escorts, cruisers and battleships began to detonate. Finally the entire fleet erupted with a roar that outshined the sun.

As the wreckage cleared, not one Chaos ship had survived long enough to fire a shot.

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The last of the orbital defenses drifted towards the planet, leaving trails of fire from the wounds that the torpedo attack had ripped open. The _Suus Telum_ and the other ships of the task force slowed into orbit above the highest concentration of energy on the planet, and began to shed landing craft. Gunmetal grey drop pods sliced into the atmosphere, followed by slower Thunderhawks, Orca dropships and Eldar assault ships.

Fire sprung up from the chaos-infested ground almost immediately. Two drop pods and an Orca detonated instantly, their passengers incinerated before even seeing the enemy, as low-power lasers and smaller missiles found their mark.

The true fire power, however, ignored the landing craft completely. A destroyer detonated, followed by the escort _Sword Gamma_. The initial volley missed the _Suus Telum_ completely, and the _Fhianna Rethol_ and _Or'es Gharial For'tani_ suffered only light damage as their high-powered shields absorbed or redirected the firepower easily.

Even as the _Suus Telum_ span and began to bombard the ground weapons, with it's rapid-fire Bombardment Cannon punching out a round every ten seconds, the second wave of munitions reached the fleet… and completely ignored the warships.

Some foul intelligence had figured out or guessed the Imperial's mission, for every shot in he second wave was homing in on the _Warrior's Chariot_.

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The _Terrible_'s bridge erupted into cheers as the flash from the destroyed fleet shone in through the viewports, ensigns slapped each others backs, officers shouted out praise and thanks to the Emperor, even the servitors cackled in glee. An entire fleet destroyed the space of a few minutes. The unstoppable Chaos advance halted, right on the edge of the Segmentum Solar!

Of all the people on the bridge, only Parol remained silent.

"Too few… too few ships by far…" Parol murmured. He dropped his eyes to the sensor screens and paled. "General order to all ships! Reload! Reload and fire for the love of-" Parol staggered as _Terrible_ shuddered in a sudden grav. anomaly.

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Shinji felt Unit 01 strain against the restraints as the _Warrior's Chariot_ surged aside to dodge yet another barrage of shots from the corrupted planet below. Unlike any other insertion Shinji could remember, the planets defenses were not in the hands of the Imperium, and the defenders seemed to have guessed that the single _Harbinger_-class transport was a greater threat then the rest of the task force. At any rate, from the shouted commands over the Comm., _Warrior's Chariot_ seemed to be attracting nearly twice as much fire as any of the other ships and…

_Warrior's Chariot_ leaped sideways as the superstructure groaned.

Massive damage to port side, damage control gangs to frame 283…+++

_Might of Mars_ is gone! The Titan took a shard of shrapnel right through the cockpit! Princeps Dorlian is dead!+++

We've lost the links to genarium control; say the healing prayers and get the backup online now!+++

WE'RE TAKING HEAVY DAMAGE, WE MAY NOT LAST MUCH LONGER+++ Orgenati said, overriding the Comm. channels. +++PREP THE EVAS AND PREPARE FOR EMERGENCY DROP+++

Shinji felt Unit 01 shudder as it began to shift down towards the drop tube and reached out for the mind impulse cables, slipping them into the back of his neck with the ease of practice. There was a familiar surge of disorientation as Shinji's mind melded with the two within the Evangelion, then he snapped back to awareness as the drop unit he was latched to jerked to a halt over the drop-pod hatch.

EVANGELION UNITS 01 AND 02 IN POSITION. ARE YOU READY PILOTS?+++

"Yeah," Asuka muttered, her face only slightly pale.

"Yes," Shinji muttered, "and… Orgenati?"

YES?+++

"May the Omna…Omne… May the Machine-God protect you."

WHATEVER FATE THE OMNISSIAH HAS IN MIND FOR ME IS A FATE I WELCOME. DISENGAGING SECONDARY RESTRAINTS. COMMENCING DROP IN TRES…+++

The metal hatch under Shinji's feet pulled apart, exposing the corrupted and nauseating form of the planet below.

DUE…+++

UNUS…+++

ENGAGUS!+++

Shinji saw the underside of the transport fall up and away, and a second later spotted the red form of Unit 02 falling near him, and several of the oversized canisters holding their weapons. Spotting clouds rushing up at him quickly, Shinji braced for contact with the atmosphere…

Then the screens went white as the over-stressed plasma genariums on the _Warrior's Chariot_ finally gave out and detonated, flinging shards of the ship in all directions.

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Every ship in the combined Imperial, Eldar and Tau fleet shuddered, several actually being destroyed as grav anomalies flung them into each other. Space twisted as a Warp-space distortion that dwarfed the previous event pushed itself into real-space. Reality shuddered and pulled apart in disgust.

Abaddon's main fleet pushed apart the remains of its advance force as it ripped its way back into the galaxy.

To be continued…

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Grey Knights; Officially recorded as Chapter number 666, the Grey Knights are the Imperium's greatest daemon fighters. Trained to such a high degree that any memory of a pre-Grey Knight life is destroyed, equipped with the best equipment the Ordos Malleus can make, requisition or even steal at gunpoint and with a impenetrable shield of faith wrapped around their minds, the Grey Knights are possibly the only reason that the Imperium has survived the constant war with Chaos. They are so well trained, that not one Grey Knight throughout history has ever fallen to Chaos.

Eidolon; Originally a Crone world of the Eldar, it is now a battlefield deep within the Eye of Terror. All four Chaos powers hold part of this world, and each constantly fights to spread their influence aver the entire planet. During the 13th Crusade, the Eldar successfully opened up a webway gate to this world and established a strong presence there. Their intention is to eventually re-take the planet and recover it's lost secrets for their own. Eidolon was first described in the graphic novel 'Bloodquest'.

Ordos Malleus Bond-crewmen; No normal human can survive exposure to the fiends of the warp with his mind intact, yet the crews of the Ordos Malleus's ships, especially the ships used by the Grey Knights, must face such horrors dozens of times in their lifetimes. Hence, they undergo extreme mental surgery to remove any possible weakness or personality except for the knowledge to run their ships and faith in the Emperor. They also have implanted triggers that will kill them instantly on a word from a Grey Knight.

Orca dropship; The main combat orbit-to-ground troop transport used by the Tau. Heavily armed and armored.


	9. Chapter 8

Author's note

Finally!

I'm really sorry it took so long to finish this chapter. Really, I am. There's absolutely no reason for anybody to come over and express their displeasure in person.

nervously glances at newly hired bodyguards

Really!

Anyway, I have finally gotten this story finished, and I hope it's up to everyone's expectations. Action scenes seem to be fairly difficult for me to write, so if anyone sees something that should be changed, don't hesitate to let me know.

I'll try to be quicker with the next update, but no promises.

Yoshomo; Because I'm evil of course. Actually, I ended it there because it seemed like a good place. I certainly didn't intend to take quite this long to finish this chapter though, I hope the wait wasn't TOO bad.

nick2951; I suspect that the humans, Eldar and Tau are the only races that would ever consider working together to fight Armageddon. None of the other races are interested, long-sighted or plane sane enough to properly consider what would happen. Regardless, I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Melgar; Ah, well I guess I missed that then. I suspect researching and adding him at this late date would probably be slightly more trouble then it's worth. Thanks for mentioning it though.

diabloelmo, I did wait for your approval, but you never got back to me. Sorry, but I couldn't wait any longer.

As always criticism and advice is welcome, flamers will be broken down into protein mush to be fed to servitors.

**Chapter 8**

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_Two days ago…_

There is a planet in the galaxy, covered in structures of massive machinery, metal and heaving masses of humanity, all working to the unimaginable goal of their master. Within one of the smaller, yet somehow the most important, city-mountains lay some of the most complex, ancient and advanced machines in the known universe. Filling several levels of the spire, reaching up to the sky to suck in air and what light passed through the polluted skies, stretching down miles into the ground, to suck up heat and perform other, more mysterious purposes, coated in the remains of slowly pealing gold and constantly guarded by silent, gold-clad warriors, it entombed a body of a human male.

Until recently, the body had held virtually all the characteristics of a dried, desiccated corpse. Recently, however, several pieces of machinery had changed function, injecting new chemicals and energizing long dried tissues. Now, the body appeared almost human, with only a tinge to the skin showing the effect of the embalming fluid.

The heavily armored door in front of the throne groaned open, and a squad of the gold-clad warriors, each carrying a piece of an immense gunmetal grey armor, joined those already guarding the body. One walked over to a panel and, with the glassy caution of a ritual action long practiced but never performed, tapped a combination of runes.

Long disused machinery came to life. Needles pulled loose from the bloodstream, neural links snapped out of sockets, a psychically conductive skullcap pulled away on well-greased but ill-used bearings. The enthroned figure lowly opened his sole eye and slowly grabbed the armrests of the throne-machine. With great effort, he slowly pulled himself upright and stepped forward and down onto the floor.

The golden-clad warriors moved in almost reverently, assisting the man as he slowly and painfully pulled on the gun metal armor with their assistance. He slowly pulled on a shoulder-pad, decorated in the remains of a book-and-sword symbol, which had been hastily removed and replaced with a golden aquilia.

The ancient armor whined as servo-motors and artificial fibers came to life, easily assisting the still weak and wasted muscles of it's wearer. Slowly, step-by-step, the group left the chamber within which the holy God-Emperor of the Imperium of Man had been entombed for the passed ten thousand years.

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Inquisitorial Representative Korlan leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, ignoring the shouting match that the council of the 12 High Lords of the Imperium had degraded into.

Korlan knew he was as arrogant as his fellow rulers. It was a survival trait. As a High Lord, and especially as the representative of the Imperial Inquisition, Korlan held control over planets all over the galaxy. Yet, the Imperium was so vast, so unimaginably unwieldy, that actually exercising that power was incredibly difficult. Any normal person would probably collapse after a few days of trying to use that power. The arrogance to belive that a person could actually rule the Imperium was essential, to cushion the wielder from the near hopelessness of his task and, ironically enough, to allow him to actually use the power effectively.

It also had a tendency to cause a High Lord to see things through a filter of their own perspective, demonstrated at present by the Ecclesiarch's shouted demands about why they were pulling even _more_ ships away from the troubles in the Segmentum Ultima to face 'unsubstantiated, paranoid, foolish claims' of the 'ridiculously overblown' reports of the Chaos advance within the Segmentum Obscurus.

The Paternoval Envoy of the Navigators had thrown his support with the Ecclesiarch, while the Master of the Administratum and the Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites had tried to get the two to see reason. The shouting match had lasted more then half an hour, and looked to last another three before it would likely abate, and easily demonstrated that ego clashes were also common.

Korlan, stared at the ceremonial warhammer leaning against the red-faced Ecclesiarch's chair, and idly wondered if it would be more effective in getting the high priest to see reason then the Provost Marshal's ignored arguments.

There was a suddenly indrawn breath from the seat to Korlan's right. Korlan glanced over, and raised an eyebrow. The Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica was sitting straight in his chair, white-faced and staring blindly towards the room's entrance with his empty eye-sockets. Korlan frowned, and leaned over to ask what was wrong. He never got the chance.

The chamber's doors opened.

"What!? Who dares interu…" the Provost Marshal snarled, before petering out. The intruders were members of the Adeptus Cusdodes. The Adeptus Cusdodes were the sole Imperial organization which did not ultimately answer to the High Lords, and their actions during the Age of Apostasy under High Lord Vandire was well known to all there.

As the squad marched into the chamber, Korlan realized that there were at least three more squads outside. There were more Cusdodes in one place then Korlan had ever seen before. The silence hung tensely as the squad professionally swept the room of threats, before splitting up. A figure strode into the room. Korlan frowned when he saw the gun-metal grey armor.

A Gray Knig…

Korlan's mind came to a halt with all the grace of a mag-train that had leaped the tracks as the figure's face finally registered in his thoughts. It was a face that he had never seen in person, but stared out from every shrine on every world of the Imperium.

The Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica sagged to his knees in supplication. "Mighty One, Master of All, Great…"

The Emperor held out a palm quietly. The room fell silent, waiting for the first words for the Emperor to say in thousands of years.

"Evacuate the Imperial Palace," He said quietly. "Now."

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_Low orbit over the Black Legion's fortress world_

_Now…_

The explosion marking the death of the _Warrior's Chariot_ and every man and woman aboard it vanished from above Shinji as he dropped below the polluted clouds. Shinji had barely a second to comprehend what had happened, before the altitude jets built into the drop harness suddenly slammed him sideways.

Shinji blinked, and realized he couldn't see. It took a couple of seconds to orientate himself, but he quickly realized that he wasn't blind; instead he was dropping past a wall so black that it seemed to absorb light from the very air. Shinji cautiously tapped a switch, and a pair of rocket flared for a second, shifting him back from the wall.

It was like falling into a canyon, with the spires of rock replaced by towering black skyscrapers. Balconies, icons, strange, half-glimpsed statues of strange and nauseating creatures flashed by as Shinji fell.

Finally, the stabilizer jets went to full thrust. Shinji winced under the sudden deceleration, but it only lasted for a few seconds before the jetpack ejected from the sockets. Shinji was left in free fall for a second, just long enough to tense before he hid, armored legs bending to absorb the shock of landing.

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The Eva pens were filled with curses, many strong enough to actually take form and scuttle away into the twelve dark corners of the massive rectangular room, as Zaraphiston ran along the wall hugging platform to the small platform that served as the manufactory's control center.

"Activate the functional Evas warp-spawn! NOW!" he screamed. One of the corrupted tech-priests clustered on the platform, who was either braver or stupider then his fellows, stepped forward.

"But, my Lord!" it croaked out. "None of them are complete and properly bound! They'll be uncontrollable if we activate them noooooaarrrrggghhhh…" the tech-priest hit a hanging Eva armor plate hard enough to shatter all of his remaining organic bones. He slid off the plate and plummeted to the distant floor below. Nobody heard the final thud.

Zaraphiston lowered his staff and glared at the remaining tech-priests. "Perhaps I wasn't clear. ACTIVATE THEM NOW YOU WARP-DAMNED…"

As the tech-priest rapidly went through the necessary commands and sacrifices to rouse the daemon spirits, several more odd creatures were birthed from the curses and ran for shelter.

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Alaric didn't even flinch as the drop pod slammed into the ground. When the pod hatches didn't immediately open, he glanced at the pod's status screen; which showed that the pod had sunk to an unusual depth, nearly a meter down.

There was a fierce whine, as the servos were forced to, not only open the hatches but also lift the weight of the drop pod and its five passengers clear of the hole. The Grey Knights hopped out, Dvorn hefting his nearly unique Nemesis Hammer with ease.

Alaric looked around, taking in the situation with a single glance. Light-stealing black towers edged the surprisingly wide path, easily capable of allowing a few Titans to march down it side by side. The unevenness and weakness of the ground beneath their feet was easily explained; it was made of bones, a layer at least a meter deep given the ground underneath wasn't visible in the gaps. The slowly decaying bodies piled around the towers indicated that they probably came from the sacrifices tossed off the higher levels over the years. Alaric quickly noted that the ground would likely be unstable, and pushed his revulsion to the back of his mind. There were quite a few people about, their dazed and malnourished appearance indicating their low, probably enslaved, status.

"All brethren," Alaric said over the vox, "move out and secure a landing zone." Alaric glanced over at a sound of gun-fire. Several of the slaves had been advancing towards the Grey Knights, and squad Gorthain had gunned them down. A quick glance showed that the eyes of many of the slaves were beginning to glow a dull red as some malign intelligence began to herd them towards the intruders. "Deal quickly with the slaves, leave none of them alive."

"What of the ones that are or may have been Imperial, Brother-Captain?" Justicar Johnsian asked from the opposite side of the drop zone.

"We can not take any risks in this environment. Grant them the Emperor's mercy." Alaric ran forward, sweeping his Nemisis halberd out from his back, as the first shots began to bounce from his armor.

"I am the hammer," Alaric began, "I am the right hand of my Emperor…"

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Shinji looked up from the tank he had picked up as gunfire bounced from his armor. A cluster of what looked like Hydra cannons had pushed out of the surface of a tower, like pus seeping from a wound, and opened fire on him.

Shinji hefted the tank in his hand for a moment, and then tossed it at the guns. Both crumpled rather satisfactorily.

Shinji shook his head. _This is wrong_, he thought worriedly, _there's nothing I've seen yet that would need an Eva to deal with it._

_Shinji!_ Yui's voice whispered into the back of his mind. _I've spotted several Eva-type sensor siluetes! They're heading for Asuka!_

Shinji spun instantly, and ran down the street, barely sparing a thought to castigate himself for doing something Misato had warned him against.

She had told him never to taunt Murphy.

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_Bridge of the_ Apocalypse _class Battleship_ Terrible_, system 129-6 '_R'lyeh's Might'

Parol clutched at a handrail as _Terrible_ shuddered under the impact of another macro shell. Virtually the entire starboard broadside was gutted, with little more then close in defense turrets still functional. The battle could be best described as chaos, with both fleets completely intermingled.

There were some areas of order, strata of Cruisers clustered around battleships that blasted at virtually anything approaching them. For the rest of it, it was a whirling chaotic mess where he who fired first, survived.

And the Chaos ships, with their older, faster and more advanced weapons, engines and shields and much more brutal crews were eminently suited for this type of battle. Parol's practiced eye could already tell that they were slowly being overwhelmed, as more and more Imperial, Tau and Eldar ships erupted into clouds of gas and fire.

"Sir!" an ensign shouted from the sensors section. "Chaos cruiser inbound! They're going to ram!"

"Come to heading 137 degrees by 5 degrees ascension! Spin 90 degrees to port!" Parol shouted, stepping over the corpse of Captain Shaptmann, who had died when an exploding console had smashed a railing through his abdomen. _Terrible_ shifted, slowly rising above the inbound cruiser as it spun, desperately trying to bring it's port weapons to bear.

Parol ignored the spinning shapes through the viewports, focusing on the flickering holo-table as it showed the two ships moving. Slowly, the icons drifted towards each other, their slowness a betrayal of the true, immense speeds that the ships were flying at. Parol almost sighed in relief. They had been lucky; the Cruiser wasn't turning fast enough to keep them in it's sig…

_Terrible_ heaved like a drunk ensign on planet-side leave as the inbound cruiser opened fire.

"Damage report!" Parol shouted, clinging to the holo-table as it's image disintegrated into confused static.

"Shield failure! Our Voids are down!"

"Magos Vilnarium reports the links between the Genarium and the engines is severed! We've lost propulsion!"

Parol stared down at the table as it slowly regained cohesion. The staticy image told him enough as _Terrible_'s acceleration dropped to pure inertia. There was no way they could avoid being hit now, and without the main engines there was no way to re-orientate the ship to bring the weapons to bear on the cruiser

"Sir, inbound ship from 102 degrees, 60 degrees ascension!"

Parol looked up in time to see a shadow fell over the bridge as a light brown Tau cruiser, bleaching firepower and smoke in equal measure, flew past the battleship. Dozens of high-powered energy cannons left ionized streaks on eyes as they blasted the kamikaze Chaos cruiser apart. Parol didn't sag with relief, but that was purely due to decades of discipline.

"Comm. Officer. Send a message to that Xen… to that _Tau_ ship. 'Good shooting…'" Parol hesitated, before shrugging. Given how the battle was going, it wasn't like the Inquisition would get a chance to 'talk' to him before _Terrible_ was opened up like a used ration tin. "'And thanks. It has been an honor.' End message."

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_Within the depths of the Black Legion's citadel-city _Gryaltol'geten Martak

"Where the hell are you, Baka!" Asuka shouted, slamming the busted barrel of her gun into the face of the creature in front of her. It's wolfish face seemed to come apart under the blow, false-flesh rapidly reforming into a cluster of fang covered tendrils which quickly wrapped around the weapon and began chewing noisily.

Grimacing, Asuka quickly released the gun before the questing tentacles reached her hands. Even as she jumped back, more tendrils began to force their way out of the creature, bending back armor plating and wriggling in the air, fang-filled mouths biting the air hungrily.

Asuka snatched the power knife from her left shoulder blade, a confident smile returning to her lips as the blade's reassuring hum sprang to life as the field activated. The daemon-eva reached forward, armor over the arm parting as more tendrils pushed outwards. Asuka slashed out, the knife's power field passing effortlessly through the wrist. The severed arm came apart into several broken flesh-whips, ooze splattering from the flailing ends as the creature howled in agony.

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Alaric jumped and rolled aside smoothly as his peripheral vision caught the massive, oddly-colored blob of daemon blood falling towards him from the titanic battle above. The advancing Black Legionary squad was less lucky; the falling mass of liquid Chaos instantly killed half of them on impact, and the pain-filled shrieks of the remaining marines quickly died out as the liquid rapidly ate away their power armor and flesh.

Some instinct caused Alaric to point his storm bolter at the pulsating blob, which proved fortunate as the blob pulled apart to reveal a cluster of over twenty Tzenech flamer daemons, which rapidly sprinted towards the Imperial lines.

The forward ranks of daemons fell as rapidly aimed bolter rounds and pulse fire cut them down. Alaric hefted his halberd, mouthing the Litany of Hatred as the remaining daemons reached close range.

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Shinji ran round the corner of one of the black towers desperately searching for any sign of Asuka and Unit 02, leaving barely enough attention to make sure he didn't step on any of the smaller Grey Knights or Tau forces.

Shinji quickly spotted the red form of Unit 02, grappling with… _Well, it's defiantly a Eva… sort of_, a part of his mind noted. It was missing a lot of plates of armor, and it's exposed flesh seemed to be made up of tentacles or giant worms making up the shape of the Eva.

Back long before the horror that had been the 15th angel, Asuka had subjected Shinji to long tirades, not all of which had been to do with him. Several had seemed to simply be a way for her to vent, and Shinji could recall at least two of which concerned certain aspects of Japanese pornography. Shinji ducked as an arm flew over his head, coming apart into several chucks of writhing tendrils that splattered against the skyscraper behind him.

It seemed that Asuka was working out her anger with that aspect of Japanese culture fairly well (although given that the creature in question was marked with Tzenech symbols rather then Slannesh ones, it probably didn't have sex in mind).

Shinji hefted the power sword he had picked up, studying the battlefield to pick out a path to her that didn't involve stepping on any of the Imperials.

There was a horrific shriek behind him. Shinji spun…and saw absolutely nothing. It wasn't until there was a second bird-like scream. He looked up. Crouched on an extra-large protruding sacrificial ledge perched a second Chaos Eva.

After Seele's aborted Third Impact, Shinji had usual thought of the mass-produced Evangelions as 'harpies'. Their wings, posture and to a degree, fighting style, reminded Shinji of a picture on the front of one of Asuka's German novels. It had showed the traditional version of the half-woman/half-bird creatures, caught in the act of sweeping down towards their prey. This creature crouching overhead, however, looked more like a harpy then the M-P Evas had.

It leapt, dropping down with it's feathered wings outstretched and beak open in a bird-like war cry.

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Shas'Ui T'au Kais carefully sighted in on another Chaos Marine, and fired, punching a round from his rail rifle through the marine's head. As it toppled, Kais lowered the rifle and searched for his next target.

Oddly enough, despite the nausea inducing architecture around him (which seemed to be calling to the 'Mont'au' madness within him), Kais hadn't been having too much trouble with the darkness coiling behind his eyes. It was probably his position. He was presently on a ????, two stories up and easily a couple of hundred meters behind the front lines, sniping off the Mont'au marines one by one. The distance coupled with the act of studying the enemy mostly through a scope seemed to have a sanitizing effect on the warfare around him, completely unlike the 'up-close-and-personel' nature of the 'pit' on Dolmour IV which had virtually stolen his sanity.

Kais started imperceptibly as a mechanical howl rose from the Chaos lines. Turning, he quickly spotted the massive, black, spiky tank as it smashed through a XV88 battlesuit. Hard, course lines typical of the gue'la, as well as the dents and wounds that nobody had bothered to repair gave the impression of lethal power. _Land Raider_, the diactic memories supplied. Kais didn't bother with the detailed information hypnotically fed to him during training, he instinctively lifted, aimed, and fired at the forward of the two crew hatches on the top.

The 'spang' as the shot bounced off harmlessly was audible even from two stories up. The tank veered, heading straight for Kais' hidey-hole. Kais didn't leave himself time to think, he simply jumped backwards, reaching out. His hand found one of the spikes he had used to climb up just before the Land Raider smashed through the base of the support he had been on. The sight of the structure crumbling away from the wall almost distracted Kais from the wrenching pain as his body jerked to a halt; hanging from one arm.

Here was a 'shlurp' and the spike shifted. Kais looked up, just in time to see the spike warp out of the wall, becoming the tip of a writhing tentacle. Kais instinctively let go.

The spike-tendril was only a single story up, so fortunately he escaped major injury, but Kais still left a crater in the unstable ground when he hit. He sat up, waving a hand at the clouds of bone-dust. /they parted, just in time for him to see the Land Raider as it skewed around. Kais found himself staring right down the barrels of the two Heavy Bolters. He instinctively squeezed the trigger.

The shot from his railgun flew straight into the main optic cluster, shattering it instantly. The thinner armor under the cluster, designed with gaps to allow the connections to the original machine spirit (and now the half-organic daemon-possessed abomination that had replaced it) to pass through it, gave under the force of the railgun. The shot slammed into the daemon brain, splattering it inside it's container, and still had enough force to slam the gunner in the tank into the rear hull.

The Land Raider skewed over to the left as a scream sounded from it's loud-speakers and smashed to a stop against the nearest wall.

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Asuka spun and kicked. A perfect high kick lifted the creature away from her and slammed it into a, now rather battered, skyscraper. It screamed as it hit, the tendrils on it's back breaking apart under the impact. Even as she watched, yet more tentacles pushed out from under the injured ones. It crouched, obviously preparing to leap. Asuka tensed…

As the be-tentacled creature lurched forward, Asuka quickly stepped aside and brought the chain axe down with all her might. The spinning blades passed through the cancerous flesh that made up the neck almost effortlessly, sending the creature's head plummeting towards the battleground below. The head bust into flame as it fell, several tiny figures jumping aside as it hit. Asuka sighed in relief as she straightened…

…Which was the moment when the winged monstrosity floating overhead slammed into her back. Asuka felt it grab her head…

And was thrown out of the link with Unit 02 by Kyoko. She doubled over, throwing up as the system shock threw her stomach into convulsions.

Even over the noise of her stomach voiding itself, however, she still heard the massive crack-snap as Unit 02's neck snapped.

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Shinji started at the sudden snapping noise and spun. The Power Sword fell from suddenly nerve-less fingers. There stood a scene right out of his worst nightmares; a winged Eva, hunched over the broken form of Unit 02. The daemon-Eva's maw open wide as it bent down to bite…

_Shinji stared in horror as Unit 01 cleared the transport tube. There were several white Eva's crouched over the half-eaten remains of Unit 02. Horrible feelings of anger, fear and self-loathing rose up inside of him and he released them in the only way he knew how._

_"NNNNNNOOOOO!!!"_

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"Who was that?" Brother-Captain Alaric said into his vox-system, after the shriek of horror cleared, "identi…"

He was cut off as Unit 01's jaw dropped, and the scream of the Berserker was heard for the first time in dozens of millennia.

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The daemon-Eva turned out to be more intelligent then the SEELE mass-produced Evas; as soon as it heard the scream, it dropped Unit 02 and leaped into the air. It barely managed two beats of it's bat wings, however, before the leaping form of Unit 01 smashed it into the side of one of the Black Legion's towers.

Sheer rage kept Unit 01 suspended there long enough for it to slam it's left hand and it's feet into the wall for purchase, even as it grabbed the daemon-Eva's head and started slamming it into the building's tortured armor.

By the time the panicking daemon-Eva had managed to twist around for purchase, Unit 01 had smashed it clear through the ten-meter thick armor and deep into the twisted corridors and dark rooms beyond. The daemon-Eva pushed hard, ripping it's head clear of Unit 01's hand and shoving the enraged Evangelion out into the air. Unit 01 spun in midair, hitting the ground on all fours like a cat. A second thump marked the daemon-Eva hitting the bone-ground.

Unit 01 snatched the massive power sword from the ground where it had fallen and bought it up in a smooth loop. It shuddered to a stop as the daemon brought up a desperately snatched lump of debris in the blade's path. Unit 01 angrily watched as dark coils of energy wrapped around the chunk. They rapidly faded away, revealing an Eva sized daemon blade, dripping blood and covered with hundreds of comparatively tiny jaws snapping hungrily.

Unit 01 spun away, keeping the power blade imposed between the two evas. Eva 01 and the daemon-eva circled each other wearily. Unit 01 brought it's blade up and tensed to leap…

And nearly fell to it's knees as a massive weight hit it in the back. Before Unit 01 could move again, a pair of massive arms grabbed it from behind, trapping it's arms against it's waist.

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Asuka ignored the faint smell that tainted the LCL and the whine of the un-serviced filters as they struggled with the contamination as she ran a quick status check on Unit 02. She reached out, and snagged the few cables that had slipped out of the Mind Impulse Unit during her convulsions, and cautiously clicked them back into place in her neck implant.

"Here goes nothing," she muttered as she steeled herself for a moment, and then reached out for the link.

Raw agony slammed into her head even through the tentative, partial connection. Muscles in her neck spasmed in sympathy with Unit 02's fractured neck.

Asuka forced herself to focus through the pain, and sent a tendril of thought spiraling down to the humming S2 organ. Power flowed into the Eva's nervous system. With a gruesomely sickening pop, the neck snapped back upright. The power flowing under Asuka's will forced the cells surrounding the break into accelerated repair; nerves slithered across the break, seeking their counterparts, fractured bone knitted together in seconds, muscles and tendons writhed as they searched blindly for the proper anchor points.

As the pain slowly faded, Asuka settled fully into the link, resuming control.

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Unit 01 howled as armor began to splinter under the force of the crushing grasp, and slammed it's head back into the daemon-eva behind it. False-flesh gave under the assault, foul fluids splattering against the back of Unit 01's head, but the creature's strength didn't waver at all.

The wolfish features of the other daemon-eva creased in a foul leer as it drew it's blade back, and swung.

Moving quickly, Unit-01 dropped to it's knees, kicking back to overbalance it's opponent and curling up into a ball, dragging the daemon-eva over as an importune shield. The frictionless black blade sliced through the daemon-eva, chopping it in half, and was just long enough to leave a smoking gash in Unit-01's back.

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_The garden complexes of the Imperial Palace, Terra_

The Emperor stared back across the painstakingly maintained gardens, now covered by a heaving mass of Administratum scribes, Tech-priests, low-level Astropaths and the other thousand and one different types of imperial servants that worked in the immense structure of the Imperial Palace. He glanced away as the Inquisitorial Representative crossed the near kilometer wide patch of empty ground (bar the hyper-reactive Adeptus Cusdodes) around him, and dropped to his knees.

"Supreme One, Lord of Mankind, Great…"

"Has the evacuation been completed?" the Emperor interrupted, trying not to roll his eyes. _It will probably be quite a while before they stop adding the ten minutes worth of titles, _he thought to himself.

"Ah… Yes my Lord. The Imperial palace is completely empty." The Emperor nodded.

_The Palace is empty, and Shinji and Asuka are in place. It's time._

_Very well._

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It is common knowledge in the Imperium that the souls of a thousand psykers are fed into the Golden Throne, and hence the God-Emperor himself, daily. Common knowledge was in fact, wrong. The souls of the recently deceased psykers flowed into the Golden Throne, through incredibly ancient systems, down kilometer long cabling into an immense hollow sphere deep under the palace once known as the White Egg, through more cabling stretching across the gaps within the White Egg, and finally into immense implants wired into the back of the pale white figure of Lilith.

The equivalent of more then a million alpha-plus grade psykers had been fed directly into Lilith's soul. Her power had been boosted to unimaginable levels.

_It's time._

For the first time in millennia, Lilith began to move. As she unfolded, energy began to gather over her head.

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The Imperial Palace rose in it's mighty gothic majesty like a mountain. Immense tarnished Aquilas stood proud on it's walls, large enough to be seen for thousands of miles. 10 meter copper gargoyles dripped green corrosion like the tears of time. The Eternity gate itself loomed overhead, large enough to easily pass even an _Emperor_-class Titan and still marked by the scars of war from ten thousand years ago.

Personally, the Emperor thought that it looked like a small hive-city with delusions of grandeur.

The ground shuddered. Windows in the palace began to glow with a strange blue energy. Then, a solid blast of energy ripped up out of the top of the palace, laying waste to kilometers worth of rooms, relics and machinery. The effect made the palace look like a volcano erupting with blue lava.

Then the faintly glowing figure of Rei Ayanami rose up looking, ironically enough, like a daemon arising from the pit.

The real 3rd Impact, delayed for thousands of years, had finally begun.

To be continued…

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Members of the High Lords; many of the High Lords are (rather then nobles or other members the Imperium's elite) the leaders of the major Imperial organizations, such as:

The Inquisitorial Representative; chosen by the three Inquisitor Lords of the Ordos Xenos, Malleus and Hereticus within the Sol system, the Inquisitorial Representative (usually a trustworthy Inquisitor General) sometimes only communicates the decisions of these masters of the Ordos rather then make actual decisions of his own. The massive job of controlling the Inquisition often, however, means that the Lords are too busy to pay attention to High Lord politics, so the Inquisitorial Representative has plenty of independent power with decision making. When it comes to politics, the Inquisitorial Representative usually tends to ally with the various military members of the council, due to similar mental outlooks on any situation.

Ecclesiarch; The head of the Cult of the Emperor Ascendant, the Ecclesiarch's personal domain rivals that of the Imperial Palace itself. Master of a cluster of cathedrals and Basilica easily the size of a hive city, the Ecclesiarch tends to be a highly religious man. Although the Ecclesiarch usually is a realistic man, sometimes politics placed fanatics in the council. Such times tend to be highly turbulent for the Imperium.

The Paternoval Envoy of the Navigators; Like the Inquisitorial Representative, the Envoy of the Navigators is a representative rather then a direct person of power. The reason, however, is not due to difficulty of the job, but because the Paternova of the Navigators literally can not attend the meetings (having mutated with power and often reaching sizes that would dwarf an Ogryn).

Master of the Administratum; Usually a glorified scribe, the Master of the Administratum tends to be a very distant and detached individual as his/her often semi-mechanical mind constantly reviews the millions of facts he/she must know.

Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites; the Commander-in-Chief of the forces of Justice within the Imperium, the Grand Provost Marshal is often a highly militant man, since the pursuit of peace and justice within the Imperium can be more savage then many front-line wars.

Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica; invariably a telepath of incredible power, the Master tends to be a silent person (mostly since he already knows what the other members will say to any of his questions).

Age of Apostasy; the then Master of the Administratum, the High Lord Vandire, was an insane madman. Born into 37th millennium, Vandire used bribery and assassination to hold, not only the position of Master of the Administratum but also to take the position of Ecclesiarch. Using the power, Vandire set out to essentially conquer the Imperium from within. His Reign of Blood spread, until a massive Warp Storm bought the priest Sebastian Thor and his sect, the Confederation of Light, who had denounced Vandire as a traitor, enough time to assemble a counter force and push Vandire back to Terra. Assisted by the Space Marines, Adeptus Cusdodes and disillusioned Sisters of Battle, Thor's forces finally defeated Vandire and began the slow process of rebuilding. It was this which lead to the forming of the Ordos Hereticus to watch the other organizations of the Imperium for treachery.

_Emperor_-class Titan; Nearly one and a half times the size of the _Warlord_, an _Emperor_-class Titan stands a full 30 stories tall, and is probably the most powerful ground-based combat machine in the entire galaxy. It's weapons can not only destroy armies, but take out orbit warships up to and including the mighty Battleship classes.


	10. Chapter 9

Author's note

Here we are, the end of a great and mighty era…

Okay, enough stroking of my own ego. Seriously, I'm amazed that I made it this far. I think it is really down to you guys, who have read and reviewed my story. I've read several fanfics where the author had to deal with unpleasant or even abusive reviewers, and I'm happier then I can properly say that I've only received good, constructive and useful reviews. Were it not for your efforts, I would have never had the will to make it this far.

Thank you all.

I also want to thank diabloelmo for pre-reading my story and saving me from several blunders. His story 'And They Shall Know No Fear' is a good story that I recommend strongly.

I do intend to add an epilogue (actually a series of epilogues), which I will put up soon. After that… I honestly don't know. But I do intend to keep writing.

Jumper Prime; Erm… Opps? You're absolutely right; the black egg was the Geofront. What I meant to say was the white egg. This correction has been made, and the servitor responsible has been disassembled. As for Lilith, a twenty story, Armageddon causing woman does not simply vanish into thin air any more then one can simply walk into Mordor (actually cannon; Lilith's corpse in 'End of Evangelion doesn't vanish. In fact, her head becomes a new island). She simply… stepped back from the world. /blatant plot hole

Yoshomol; Thanks; it always good to know people enjoy reading this. Have to say that I haven't seen Rhaxephon, so I can't comment.

nick2951; It was actually _Dark Adaptus_, the sequel, that made me decide to use the Grey Knights. Of all the 'good' (if the term can possibly be applied, 'order' may be a better descriptor) races, only the Grey Knights and the Tau (no psychics and hence little/no presence in the Warp as a race) seem capable of going head to head with Chaos and not loose their minds.

As for Lilith's and the Emperor's plans… read and see. Hopefully, chapter 6's last sentence will make a little more sense.

Melgar; Yes, the end is indeed in sight, in fact this is the last chapter. I hope it's as good as the previous one.

As always criticism and advice is welcome, flamers will be used as daemonhosts by Inquisition radicals.

**Chapter 9**

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_Within the depths of the Black Legion's citadel-city _Gryaltol'geten Martak

_7 minutes to 3rd Impact_

Unit 01 roared in satisfaction as the abomination finally gave under the intense pressure. Gore spewed into the air as the last Chaos Eva split in half, splattering Unit 01 with a mixture of LCL and a darker, more nauseating ooze. Flinging the two halves aside, Unit 01 scowled out at the city, ignoring the meaningless sounds that assailed it while it searched for a new foe.

Something touched it's shoulder.

Unit 01 spun, grabbing it's assailant with one hand as it scooped up the power sword with the other hand, bringing it around in a smooth motion…

And froze as it's eyes met the four eyes of Unit 02.

Shinji forced himself upwards through space that had no dimensions, towards the light. Sound, spiraling down around him slowly began to make sense again.

"…ake up Baka, I don't want to hurt you!"

Shinji bent over within the entry plug and fought to stop his stomach convulsions as the memories of the past few minutes flooded his mind. Finally, his breathing began to slow as the recycling systems flushed out the stale LCL and brought in a fresh supply.

_Man… I'd forgotten how bad it was…_

"Hey, are you okay?" Shinji looked up, and spotted Asuka staring out of a Comm. window, the obvious anger on her face betrayed only by the equally obvious concern in her eyes.

"Yeah," he gasped through a raw throat, "yeah I'm still in one piece."

"Good," Asuka said, before pausing for a moment. "Perhaps you'd like to let me go then?" she continued meaningfully.

Shinji reached out for the link, and forced back a wince as his mind merged again with Unit 01. He was presently standing near the edge of one of the streets, holding Unit 02 up against a wall with the edge of his power sword barely a meter from it's neck. A spike of pain caused him to glance down. The tip of a Prog knife was embedded in the armor over his chest, Unit 02's arms tensed to drive it in.

_Very_ carefully, Shinji pulled back, and lowered the blade. There was a slight tug as Asuka yanked the knife free.

"Erm… What happened?" Shinji finally asked, looking around at the devastation around him. LCL seemed to be sprayed over virtually every surface in sight, massive craters stuck up from the street and exposed the innards of several skyscrapers. One had been hit so hard, that the supports hard torn apart, and it had collapsed sideways into the building next to it. There was a Chaos Eva poking out from the rubble. In several places. A couple of hundred meters apart.

"You and Unit 01 went berserk," Asuka replied. "By the time I finished regenerating the damage, you'd taken out all of the other Evas. You didn't even leave anything for me."

"Oh." The two of them, and the other four souls inhabiting the Evas, stared down the street. "So… what do we do now?" Shinji finally asked. "I don't think just taking out the last… Chaos Evas was what the Emperor had in mind."

"Well, I… Argh!" Shinji spun at Asuka's surprised grunt. Unit 02 had collapsed to it's knees and was clutching it's head, mirroring the position of it's pilot on the Comm. screen.

"Asuka!" Shinji quickly got down on one knee and cautiously laid a hand on her shoulder. "What? What is it?"

"I… I don't know," she replied, shaking her head. "Maybe just an head…ahhh!"

Shinji reached down too grab her arms, but before he reached them, a massive spike of pain hit him. It was as if someone had driven a spike into his forehead.

He collapsed, clutching his head desperately.

He never noticed the whiteness of psychic frost slowly begin to cover the interior of the entry plug.

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Dictator_-class Light Cruiser _Lord Hauptmann_, the Immaterium_

_12 minutes to 3rd Impact_

The energy streams of the Warp twisted and coiled around each other in their eternal dance. Oddly serene for such a turbulent realm, the peace of the scene was suddenly shattered as a massive slab of course matter stabbed through the streams carelessly.

Captain Rojer Garmain glanced around at the bustling bridge of the warship _Lord Hauptmann_, a _Dictator_-class Light Cruiser, as the ship slowed in it's headlong rush through the unnatural realm.

"Captain," the slightly hollow voice of the ships main Navigator, an old and obese man by the name of Draght, drifted from the main speakers. One of the secondary screens clustered around the main tac-plot flickered to life. Draght's puffy face stared out over the busy bridge officers. "We have reached the… exit coordinates. I recommend we prepare to leave this realm." The pompus Navigator smirked unpleasantly.

"Very well, Navigator Primus," Garmain replied, resisting the urge to shake his head. "All hands, prep for Warp Jump. Report status continuously." The bustling bridge somehow became busier.

"Beginning triple check on all void seals, all department heads report vacuum checks."

"DCC gangs report to jump positions and monitor for power surges."

SWITCHING ALL MACHINE SPIRITS TO WARP ENGINE MONITORING AND JUMP CALCULATIONS, PRAISE TO THE MACHINE GOD+++

Garmain regarded the ordered bridge with a pleased air, and completely missed Draght's smirk turn sinister.

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_Within the depths of the Black Legion's citadel-city _Gryaltol'geten Martak

_3 minutes to 3rd Impact_

Kais climbed slowly and painfully to his feet. _Tau've! That was clo…_

There was a wrenching screech of metal. Kais spun just in time to see something rip it's way out of the front of the Land Raider. Kais had the barest impression of tendrils, teeth and eyes, before he raised his rail rifle, aimed and…

Froze still as the Mont'au in his head stole away control of his body as easily as flipping a switch.

_Hello again, little tau_, a voice, sounding like it dripped with ooze and death seeped into his mind, filling every crack. _That's the second time you've destroyed my host. You are such a… tiresome little thing._

"Urgh… Wha.." Kais groaned through locked teeth. The thing slipped out of the concieling darkness. It wasn't really much different to the first impression; an impossible mélange of teeth, claws, tentacles and eyes floating in a cloud of darkness.

_Why, don't you recognize me little Tau? We had so much **fun** the last time we met. I tried to possess you, we fought, you banished me…_

"Im…poss…ib…"

_Oh, tut, tut. Such closed minds. I am not some pitiful creature of flesh, subject to the whimsy of death. How did that delightfully corruptible admiral put it? 'You can't kill something like that, only starve it'?_

Had Kais been able to move, he would have stumbled backwards at the wave of pure hatred, so intense that it actually congealed into a tarry black-red liquid that slowly spread out from the base of the daemon.

_Oh Yes! You starved me alright! Drove me, ME! First chosen of Tzenech, into the darkness to wither! _It chuckled._ But… There was you. A Tau psyker. **The** Tau psyker. My greatest accidental creation. So full of anger and peace, frustration and patience. Your fractured psyche was just barely enough to keep me coherent._ It moved, slowly slithering around Kais. He tried to watch it, but even his eyes refused to obey him.

_When the_ _Final Crusade began,_ it continued from behind him, _I knew you would find your way to me, so I made a deal with Abaddon the cursed. I chose to serve him, waiting for you to find me. You will become my host, my champion. And then, both of our greatest dreams will come true. For your impudence, you race will die, at your hand._

It slithered back round in front of Kais, and slowly reached out a clawed hand for Kais' head. An eye in it's palm winked at him.

_And now, young Kais… You are mine…_

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_Bridge of the_ Apocalypse _class Battleship_ Terrible_, system 129-6 '_R'lyeh's Might'

_6 minutes to 3rd Impact_

There was an oddly uneven quality to the constant vibrating of the engines. Parol found it badly distracting.

"Ensign," Parol said, glancing down at the much less crowded stations, "what's the latest report from damage control?"

"Magos Vilnarium says that the hit which took out the links from the Genarium to the engines continued through into the starboard engine; the engine's core is still functional, but the machine spirit is badly disorientated and injured. The port engine's fine, and it'll be back up in minutes, but the starboard is going to take at least half an hour."

"Damn," Parol growled to himself. He studied the Tactical holo-table as it's machine spirit tried desperately to maintain any form of image. Shaking his head, he turned to face the helm.

"Helm, bring us 93 degrees by negative 16 degrees ascension. Use the maneuvering thrusters to start us along that course, and bring the engines back in as they come back on-line."

"Ah, my Lord…" the helm officer hesitated. "Regulations require me to point out that using our thrusters like that will leave us with too little fuel for a Warp Jump." Parol stared at him. "Ah, following your orders Sir."

Parol sighed as _Terrible_ slowly came to a new heading. The Warp Jump itself didn't require fuel; the power came from massive capacitors, which the Adaptus Mechanicus somehow recharged from some mysterious source while in real space. Traveling through the Warp, however, did require fuel; meaning that wasting fuel in the maneuvering thrusters would leave them without any to run the engines over long distances. They wouldn't be able to run.

Parol glared at the failing holo-table. _It's not like we'll be able to run anyway…_

"Contact! New contact closing! It was running dark, but it's bringing it's systems back up and… Holy God-Emperor!"

"Report," Parol snapped, striding over towards the sensor stations.

"The power output, it's off the scale! Our instruments are swamped, visual, radar, everything! We're completely blind!" The screens flickered. A horrible premonition caused Parol to throw himself prone.

Every sensor station exploded. Power bleed-through from the fused sensors shattered the consoles with enough force to throw their crews clear across the bridge.

Parol ignored the blacked marks on his uniform and the shards of debris lodged in his left arm as he pushed himself to his feet.

"What… what happened?" he gasped, staring around in near shock; virtually a quarter of the remaining bridge personnel had been killed outright.

THE SEN kersck RRAY+++ the bridge's tech priest gasped from his failing vox-ponder, shrapnel glittering from several deep scores in the metal. +++THE NEW CON kersck NERGY SIGNATURE OVERLOA kersck LL SENSORS. WE'RE COMPLETELY B kersck !+++ Parol hesitated. No ship had ever lost all its sensors. There was no institutional knowledge for how to deal with this.

"Helm, do you still have control?" The ensign at the helm console nodded, ignoring the blood flowing freely from his forehead.

"Then start us spinning slowly to port." Parol looked up through the bridge's massive dome as the stars and explosions began to drift away to starboard. Parol stared up through the dome, searching for any shape that could be their potential attacker.

"There!" and ensign shouted, pointing up, "in the lower forward-port section." Parol searched the section of space impatiently.

A sudden explosion in the distance, as a ship's plasma genarium let go, revealed the ship's shape, backlight by the deaths of hundreds.

It came together in Parol's mind all at once. The massive energy signature. The ship's unnatural ability to hide until it was right on top of them. The horrendous silhouette that was known to every high ranking Admiral since the end of the Gothic war nearly 300 years ago.

"God-Emperor preserve us…" Parol hissed. "Helm! Rotate and spin us to starboard until we have a clean shot! Tactical, I know that accuracy's going to be poor given the need to eyeball it, but as soon as a gun crew has line-of-sight, open fire and don't stop, whatever happens!"

The ungainly form of _Terrible_ began to move. Before the weapon-gangs even had clean shots, the weapons began firing, sending mega- and giga-watts of power blindly towards the foe.

Though many shots missed, continuing futilely into space (or occasionally distant ships), several shots rammed home into the enemy's shields.

The _Planet Killer_'s Voids didn't even flicker under the bombardment as it moved slowly in for the kill.

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_Within the depths of the Black Legion's citadel-city _Gryaltol'geten Martak

_2 minutes to 3rd Impact_

It smashed through his mind, smashing through instinctive mental barriers, ignoring painful memories, straight as an arrow towards his target. Desperately, Shinji tried to reach for the Mind Impulse cables, but pain made his finger fumble and slip, and the questing invader had paralyzed his left limbs anyway as it moved through his motor controls.

The needle of thought dived for the Impulse link. Unit 01 began to move in spite of Shinji's desperate mental struggles. The Eva's powerful hands clamped onto the sides of the chest armor and pulled, hard.

Shinji screamed as what felt like his skin on his chest was ripped clean off, as the chest and the connected abdomen plating was ripped from the cybernetic-riddled flesh of the Evangelion. A scream caused him to look up through tear stained eyes at the screens. He was just in time to see Unit 02 repeat his actions, LCL pouring from the wounds opened up in Unit 02's flesh.

Shinji desperately pulled on the hand control with his working arm as Unit 01 began to move, completely out of his control as it moved towards Unit 02.

_Shinji…_ Shinji started as the thought rolled through his head.

"Wha? Kaworu?" Shinji murmered, fighting against the haze in his head.

_No. Shinji… I'm sorry._ A sense of foreboding pulled Shinji's attention back to the screens, just in time to see the two glowing orbs, the bright red cores of General Purpose Combat Units Evangelion Unit 01 and Unit 02, touched.

The world went white.

_I'm so sorry that it had to be you…_

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_The Grounds of the Imperial Temple_

The sky had turned red as the light from the ruined palace reflected from the polluted-black clouds by the time the Emperor's spirit fled home once again from across the stars. The Emperor's enhanced hearing could pick out the death screams, even as his super-human eyesight spotted the first man to collapse into LCL. It began to spread, more and more screams turning from those of horror to those of pain and death.

The Emperor followed the spread of 3rd Impact, pausing to watch with a raised eyebrow as the Ecclesiarch screamed in pain, before breaking down into LCL.

_Well, that explains the argument I interrupted anyway…_ he mused. He turned, watching the edge of the wave pass beyond the gardens, accelerating into the rest of Terra, and beyond.

The Emperor turned back to the shocked, still kneeling figure of the Inquisitorial Representative.

"Get up," he said quietly. "Things are going to start moving quickly. Get the Adaptus Terra to start taking the names of those who didn't die. Have the Navy reassign crews to cover losses, and rearrange the Imperial Guard regiments to cover their losses. Tell the Fabricator General to set his own house in order, the Adaptus Mechanicus will probably have been equally effected. And hurry, we will need to be prepared to rebuild the Imperium arteries of communication and trade quickly."

"I… My Lord… I don't understand, what IS this?" the Inquisitorial Representative finally asked hoarsely, climbing to his feet. The Emperor shook his head slowly.

"Endgame," he replied quietly. "The conclusion of ten thousand years of planning… and of our long fought civil war. It ends today, one way or the other."

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_Where… am I?_

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_

_Within the depths of the Black Legion's citadel-city _Gryaltol'geten Martak

Kais screamed silently in his mind, even his vocal chords torn away from his control, as Tarkh'ax ripped and tore at the crudely formed psychic-barriers and mind-chaff. Layer by layer, the daemon was ripping away his very soul.

_Why resist the inevitable, little thing? Chaos comes to all things. That will not change. Sooner or later, you _will_ be mine._

Kais felt his muscles spasm as the psychic barbs sliced their way into his motor controls. A thousand scenes of blood and death and decay filled his mind. Memories of hatred and self loathing from the training domes, the madness of Dolmour IV, the quiet, brutal mental battle between Tau'va and Mont'au in the medical center on T'au, all pulled out by his sadistic attacker. Kais knew he couldn't hold out much longer.

Something _changed_, far away, but approaching rapidly.

_What?!_ The daemon seemed to shift back slightly. Although the multitude of glaring eyes covering it in an order less pattern seemed to be staring in every direction, it somehow gave the impression of looking up. _The Crusade… How… What has _he_ done!?_

Kais found his thoughts coming back under his control again as the daemon's concentration wavered. He dived into his own mind, forcing his way past strata of memories and old layers of resentment, heading for the core.

It was a strange mixture, a mixed swirl of Tau'va calm and Mont'au selfishness.

Reaching out in a space without dimensions, Kais grabbed the strand of Tau'va.

Violation returned to him in a flash as the sense of calm seemed almost to wash the daemon's corruption from his system. He snatched up the rail rifle with feline grace and blasted the distracted daemon at virtually point blank range.

Tarkh'ax flew backwards from the force of the sudden blast, flying nearly a dozen ???? away from the ruined tank. Even before it hit the ground, it's not-flesh began to unravel.

Kais sagged with un-Tau-like relief as the daemon collapsed into slowly fading slime. Something cought his attention. A change in the light…

Kais looked up.

The dark clouds covering Gryaltol'geten Martak were parting for the first time in the planet's history, allowing the corrupted light of the Eye to flood down on the city.

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_

_Who am I?_

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_

Dictator_-class Light Cruiser _Lord Hauptmann

Captain Garmain waited nervously as the ritual approached the climax.

"Main relays are holding under the power supply.

APRROACHING INFINITE-CROSSOVER, ALL HANDS BRACE AND RECITE THE LITINARY OF SAFE PASSAGE+++

"I have control…" Navigator Draght began, as the odd lurch in the back of the mind that signified a Warp jump occurred.

Garmain opened his mouth, intending to issue the standard orders; reset the sensors, unship the weapons, charge the Voids and so on. He was interrupted.

"What, who are you?!" Garmain stared in surprise at the hard-wired Navigator Comm. screen. Draght was apparently staring at empty space near him. "Get back, or face the wrath of the Chaarrgh!"

The screen went black.

"What the…" Garmain stared at the screen for a moment before turning to the various control stations. "Comm. officer, what happened to the link with the Navigator tower?"

"I… Nothing sir. According to this… the link's still open." Garmain frowned.

"Contact the tower, get the servants to check on the Navigator Primus. Meanwhile, reset the sensors and get the ship ready to move."

"Aye sir." The bridge filled with the various chatter and nearly conflicting orders as _Lord Hauptmann_ came back to life.

A flicker of static crossed the Navigator screen, attracting Garmain's attention. He frowned; the static had seemed oddly familiar. There was another flicker, and the screen seemed to slightly clear. There was a third motion, and Garmain realized that what he thought was static, was actually someone was wiping something off the pict. sensor. The screen cleared, and one of the Navis Nobility servants leaned back on the screen.

"You there," Garmain snapped, "what happened to the Navigator Primus?"

"My Lord, he's not here," the servant replied nervously. "There's nothing, my Lord, just this strange…stuff over everything." He held out a hand, and Garmain frowned as something orangey-red dripped from it. It was much too vivid to be blood.

_Wha…_ "I want sensorium operational, now!" Garmain snapped.

"Sir?" his exec asked, quietly as the bustle somehow got busier.

"Something strange is going on, and I want to know what's near us."

"Sir, the sensors are HOLY GOD-EMPEROR!" Garmain spun at the sensor-officer's exclamation and stared in shock at the tactical screens.

There were twelve ships arranged in an obvious ambush pattern, with _Lord Hauptmann_ almost dead in the center. They were very obviously Chaos cruisers.

"Helm to full power," the exec yelled, "get us out of here!"

"Belay that order," Garmain shouted, staring at the screen.

"Sir?!"

"We're not dead yet…" The exec stared at him in shock, when a look of realization crossed his face. They both turned back to the screens, and watched silently as the Chaos ships completely failed to raise shields, open fire, or actually do anything at all.

Two of the ships, drifting slowly, collided and rebounded, leaving wreckage and air in-between them.

"What in the Emperor's name is going on?"

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_What IS this place?_

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_

_Abaddon's personal quarters aboard the_ Planet Killer

Abaddon sat on the throne in the Planet Killer and watched gleefully as the Navy scattered before his might. The presence of the Eldar was unsurprising; with his fleet poised to move into the Segmentum Solar even the wishy-washy cowards would have to move to stop him before humanity fell to his might.

The presence of the strange orange warships was unusual though. Abaddon couldn't recall a single time he had seen anything like them, although a few daemons whispered of an upstart race called the Tau. They were proving surprisingly resilient, but even they burned in their hundreds.

"Imperial scum, Eldar witches, Tau weaklings, they will all fall before Chaos," Abaddon growled happily to himself, more then happy to leave complex tactical thoughts to his subordinates and simply enjoy himself. Ten thousand years of attrition, trickery and corruption were finally paying off.

"Really?" a calm voice asked. Abaddon looked down in shock; this was the main chamber of his ship; nobody could enter here without him knowing of it.

There was a girl standing at the base of his throne. A prepubescent, naked, blue-haired albino standing alone in the midst of his trophies and prizes, yet remaining unafraid. A glance showed him that none of his bodyguard had seen the girl, in fact they all seemed to be distracted by something.

"I don't know who or what you are," Abaddon growled, coming to his feet and starting down the stairs, "but no one comes before me unannounced." In a swift move he drew the daemon blade _Drach'nyen_, raised it above his head… and hesitated.

Two things had come to his attention.

The first was that _Drach'nyen_ was moaning, not in the normal bloodlust or anger, but in what seemed to be fear. Second was the fact that the girl was not in fact standing at the base of his throne, but instead was instead _floating_, several centimeters above the floor.

The girl moved forward and before Abaddon could respond, laid a hand on his chest plate. Abaddon gasped as he felt something _twist_ inside him, and his body began to collapse.

Forcing himself to stay intact by sheer force-of-will, Abaddon managed to growl out, "who?"

"I have been known by many names Despoiler," the girl replied, her red eyes regarding him calmly. "Lilith, the second Angel, the mother of mankind… The one I like most at the present, the one with the best memories, is; Rei Ayanami." Abaddon tried to focus enough to curse, but instead collapsed, falling into a puddle of LCL that dripped out of his Terminator armor, and began to mingle with the remains dripping from the armor of his bodyguards.

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_Is there anyone there?_

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_

_Bridge of the_ Apocalypse _class Battleship_ Terrible_, system 129-6 '_R'lyeh's Might'

There were no more tactics Parol could try. The engines were barely functional, Void shields still off-line and recharging, weapons virtually ineffective against their enemy.

Parol stared up through _Terrible_'s massive viewing dome, and the main weapon of the _Planet Killer_, now easily visible as it charged to fire, seemed to stare back.

"Helm…" Parol began, "try to get us out of its path. Use whatever you can." It was futile; any of the _Planet Killer_'s weapons could immobalise them in seconds, and meter-thick armor plating would last less then micro-seconds against the _Planet Killer_'s main weapon. Still, they were the Imperial Navy. Their lives belonged to the Emperor, and Parol knew that meant they had to fight, right to the end.

_Oh God-Emperor of Terra_, Parol prayed silently, _please, get me and my crew out of this._

It was a desperate prayer being repeated throughout the massive fleet engagement as the Imperial forces slowly shrank under the attack.

And almost uniquely in the history of the Imperium; the prayer was answered very obviously.

Parol waited as _Terrible_ slowly drifted clear of the firing path of the massive weapon, waited with fearful anticipation for one of the secondary weapons to rip _Terrible_ open like a ration tin.

It never happened.

Even as the port engine came back to life under Magos Vilnarium's care, causing _Terrible_ to accelerate safely away, the _Planet Killer_ never turned, never fired, just kept drifting in the same direction while it continued to charge it's main weapon.

Energy arched between the pylons of the planet-destroying gun as it began to surpass it's capacity, blackening spots on it's surface. A pylon sagged under the heat of it's stored energy and the _Planet Killer_'s artificial gravity, power bleeding out into space in kilometer long surges. Energy began to rip through hull plates, surging into the void as the cannon tried to store much more energy then it was ever designed to.

_Terrible_ had moved far enough that the _Planet Killer_ had faded into the distance. The blinding flash as it detonated, however, was still enough to half blind it's dumbly staring Admiral.

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Tightbeam (multi-direction) commstream generation (41/998.h).

Carrier-code Oscillate:86.5 214.64. Priority-1. (1/362.q) Datastream transmission only

Logging receipt…

All targets receiving. (1/385.d).

ALLFLEET CODE

GENERAL HAIL. Suspend comms-traffic for duration.

Channels sustained.

_Fleet, this is High Admiral Parol, _Terrible._ Report status on the Chaos fleet units in your areas_

**Admiral, Captain Forsithe, _Baneful Gaze_. The ships in my area…**

**…not maneuvering…**

**…firing just on blind patterns…**

**…drifting right into our fire…**

**…those two collided! They just ran right…**

_Clear the channels! Clear the… QUIET! Admirals _only,_ report the status of the arch-enemy._

**Rear Admiral Ruman, _Quiet Dignity_. All the Enemy units near my force seem to have gone silent. They're either drifting or continuing on a straight line course firing blandly at nothing.**

**Admiral Gotheon, _Righteous Hatred_, the situation is the same for me; it's like they all became ghost ships at the same time!**

**Por'el Vash'ya Kor'tar, speaking for the Tau fleet. Our observations match that of your fle…**

**Could someone get that bloody diplomat off the Vox and put a proper navel officer on?**

_Rear admiral Ruman, be quiet. Admiral Andrasen? Why haven't you responded?_

**Flag Captain Kahnlen, _Vengence_. I'm afraid Admiral Andrasen is dead High Admiral, he was lost when the bridge took a hit. I guess I'm in command for now.**

_…_

_Understood Flag Captain. Do your sensor readings agree with our observations?_

**Aye, my Lord**

_Very well. All ships that are incapable of fighting are to break out and head for _R'lyeh's Might_. This… includes any Xen… _Ally_ ships requiring safe dock; they are to be rendered any assistance they need. Meanwhile, get some tugs out here; I want… lets say ten of each identifiable class of Chaos vessel pulled clear; the Inquisition or the Adaptus Mechanicus may want to examine them. Send some boarding parties to ensue they're clean, Space Marines for preference if they can be spared from the planet's defenses. As for the rest… Open fire. Destroy every other Chaos ship. Walk a red path through them._

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_The Warp_

_The tangle of Warp energy stared out across the boiling not-space of the Warp. Memory didn't seem to be returning. There certainly wasn't any answer to his…her?...it's? questions. Some parts of the warp, tangles of energy that seemed to resemble itself, did seem to be drifting closer though._

I wonder where Asuka is_, it idly wondered as it studied the approach entities._

Asuka…_ Memory returned in a flash. As it did so, the energy writhed, collapsing inwards, rushing into the tiny speck of matter at it's heart._

_The Warp shape that made up the being known to friend (well, temporary ally to be backstabbed as soon as possible) and foe alike as the great war god Khorne, drinker of souls, collector of skulls glared down at the revealed figure of Unit 01. Deep within the creature, the soul of a Japanese boy, technically no more then 15 years old, glared back._

_Shinji finally understood the Emperor's plan. By starting 3rd Impact within the Eye of Terror, Unit 01 had absorbed the souls of every Chaos worshipper within the home of the Traitor Legions. Simultaneously, Lilith had repeated the 3rd Impact outside the Eye of Terror, absorbing the souls of every Chaos worshipper and traitor to the Emperor within the Imperium. Right now, the two angelic creatures held and controlled the souls, the minds…and the belief of every single human Chaos follower in the galaxy._

_And belief, in the Warp, is power._

_Shinji stared at the personification of war and bloodlust, with the massed power of the three other Chaos Gods hovering behind him and said five words;_

_"I don't believe in you."_

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_

In defiance of all physics, which was, admittedly fairly common with events connected to Chaos, the results of Shinji's actions were visible to virtually every planet over half of the Imperium simultaneously. The Eye of Terror, visible as everything from the bloated monstrosity that loomed over the planets of the Cadia Sector, to the glaring moon-sized whirlpool visible in the sky both day and night from Terra, began to convulse. Energy spurted into space, released from the massive energy storm as it began to collapse in on itself.

The massive tear in space that formed the Eye's very heart began to shrink, as reality raged against the perversion that intermingled the real and unreal together. The Eye shifted colors, descending through the spectrum as it collapsed.

Trillions of people watched in amazement as the largest source of terror in the Imperium shrank, faded and finally vanished forever.

To be concluded…


	11. Epilogue

Author's note

I'm sorry this final update took so long to complete; but I have had an extremely busy semester since the last post. I hope this epilogue will finish off the various plot lines left hanging at the end of the last chapter.

nick2951: I'm glad you enjoyed the chapter. I'm sorry it took so long to update, but it wasn't completely under my control. I would be happy to pre-read your story if you want.

Yoshomo: I intended the chapter to be epic, and I'm glad you liked it. Unfortunately, the Tyranid simply didn't fit well into this story; the massed force of the Final Crusade of Abaddon didn't leave much room for a second set of protagonists. They do get a mention here though.

melgar: As I said to Yoshomo, I couldn't really fit in a second 'disorder' force, so the Orks and Necrons simply had to take a back seat. Slannesh is mentioned here; taking an unusual place at the top of the twisting web that is the balance of power in the Warp. I might write one or two spin-offs to show what's happening elsewhere with the other races during the Final Crusade, but that might be a while in the future.

Jumper Prime; Odd coincidence; I finished the last part the same day I received your review. I'm sorry it took so long, the last three months have been hectic. Anyway, I hope this chapter lives up to your expectations.

As always criticism and advice is welcome, flamers will be… ah… um… 'dealt with'. Somehow. I'll think of something.

**Epilogue**

The effects of Lilith and Shinji's actions were, on the whole, much more subtle then they first appeared. Although the three of the four Chaos Powers and virtually every cultist and heretic in the Imperium was destroyed, the vast daemonic masses of the Warp were left virtually untouched. There were still weak-willed fools who believed that they could somehow succeed where Horus and Abbadon had failed and bend Chaos to his or her whim and daemons that were happy to use them. And many foes and monsters in the galaxy had nothing to do with Chaos, and remained unaffected by the Imperium's victory.

New cults and warbands were formed (most pleasure based; thanks to it's origins in the Eldar race and the existence of the Dark Eldar pirates, Slannesh remained in existence, although massively reduced), and warp breaches with daemons spreading across planets still happened. The Inquisition, however, remained just as strong as ever, and with fewer major distractions were, for the most part, easily capable of crushing the traitors and heretics almost as quickly as they emerged. Outbreaks that would have spread unnoticed until the only solution was an Exterminaus now came into view of the much more focused Inquisition and were easily destroyed.

The collapsing Eye of Terror left nearly fifty worlds behind, recently un-contaminated but still showing the scars of their time in the warp-storm. The Eldar, led by the colony on Eidolon, claimed these worlds as their own. The local remain Imperial authorities had opposed the actions initially, until word came down from the Emperor (through the High Lords) agreeing with the Eldar's claim (not completely from altruism; the Eldar's small numbers would be thinly spread over fifty-odd worlds, so if they proved hostile, the Imperial Navy could clear them up quickly piecemeal).

The Tau Empire also underwent severe change. The losses to their main attack force, especially so far from the Empire, pretty much stalled the next Expansion-phase, as well as demonstrating to the Tau's most trusted Shas'os that the 'religious nonsense' the Imperium had sprouted since the first contact between the two cultures was actually based, for the most part, in fact as well as the full force and might of the Imperium's war-based culture. The same battle also lead to a fairly solid peace treaty between the two, although an actual alliance would be extremely difficult (the Imperium remained highly xeno-phobic) the Emperor and the High Lords, and the Tau Ethereals had agreed that the non-encroachment agreement on Tau territory would be rock solid.

Without the need to divert the huge fleets to keep the Eye bottled up or monitor the Eldar or Tau, the Imperium was able to focus it's mighty forces on the twin threats of the Orks (especially around the war-torn region of Armageddon) and the encroaching forces of the Tyrannic Great Devourer. The wars would be terrible, but without other distractions, the Imperium was finally able to bring their opposing forces against the two threats to virtually even numbers with their foes, though the wars would likely rage for decades, or even centuries to come.

The galaxy did not instantly become a place of hope, peace and love. Entire planets had fallen from the sight of the Imperium as corrupted Astropaths died in the Emperor's gambit. Dozens of ships had died slow, lingering deaths when traitorous Navigators died in the galactic cleansing. The massive web of communications and trade in the Imperium had developed dangerous gaps that would yet cost thousands of lives from power struggles and starvation. War and strife, bigotry and intolerance, radical religious fanaticism and stagnated development all remained commonplace. But at the dawn of the 42nd millennium, the galaxy had come closer to that happy ideal then it ever had in the last 30,000 years.


	12. The Inquisitor

**The Inquisitor**

_The _Suus Telum,_ in orbit around the reclaimed Eldar Crone world_ Sha'el'ilna Dro'hagt, _once the fortress world of the Black Legion_

"The Eldar are getting somewhat… insistent in their demands for us to leave this system, My Lords," the Bond-Captain said, patiently watching the two silent men as they stared through the bridge's viewscreen at the planet below.

"Have _any_ of the search teams found _anything_?" the human asked without looking back.

"No, my Lord. Neither the ground teams, nor the over-flights, have found anything but a few shards of armor and unused or discarded weapons. Of the war-machines or the pilots themselves, there is no sign."

"Frag." Lord Inquisitor Thorne scowled down at the planet silently for a while. When he spoke again, it was half to himself, half to the superhuman beside him. "We lost all the labs and research data when they hit Nemisis Tessari. We lost what little information we still had when the _Warrior's Chariot_ blew, along with most of our remaining samples, Tech Magi Orgenati and a full half-squadron of Titans. Now without the originals… And if someone escaped with the Chaos heretics' information…"

"I doubt that it will be a problem," acting Brother-Captain Alaric replied. "The… '_Purge_' are they calling it?" Thorne nodded. "Well, the Purge seems to have been extremely thorough, anyone of Abaddon's servants who knew of such dangerous information would have been so touched by Chaos that they would have died. If I remember the brief I read of the Evangelion's history, when they began working on them, an accident killed off half of the population of a planet. I suspect any problem of a group of Xenos trying to copy or repair one would rapidly solve itself."

"Even the Eldar?" Thorne questioned, raising an eyebrow. "The Adaptus Mechanicus admits that Eldar technology is a heresay beyond anything they understand."

"The Eldar have always been arrogantly disdainful of human technology. I doubt that would change quickly."

"True…" Thorne mused to himself, before shrugging. "I suppose there is little more we can do here anyway. All right, Bond-Captain. Get the rest of our people on board, tell the Eldar we're leaving and get the squadron to start moving out-system as soon as possible. We're heading back to Terra."


	13. The Admiral

**The Admiral**

_Bridge of the_ Apocalypse _class Battleship_ Terrible_, dry-docked in the repair yard _Worker's Wages_, system 129-6 '_R'lyeh's Might'

There was a sudden burst of static, scrambling the sensor-repeater screen. The Tech-Priest spat a binary curse and shifted one his mechendrites within the cognitor's guts. There was a spray of sparks, and the image sprung back into focus.

High Admiral Parol resisted the urge to shake his head, and instead focused on the tac. plot being relayed from the Cruiser squadron escorting the Tau fleet through the wreckage patches that now literally blocked a quarter of the sky.

There was a surge of Warp energy and the image vanished.

"They're gone," an ensign said quietly.

Parol nodded. "Very well. Captain Baraen, the bridge is yours. I'll be in my quarters if you need me." Not waiting for the newly promoted officer's reply, Parol strode through the bridge's shattered doors and through the adjoining chapel.

The Admiral's Quarters on any battleship are purposely near to both the bridge and the flag-bridge, and _Terrible_ was no exception. It only took ten minutes for Parol to reach his office and collapse into his chair. His desk, a valuable antique, was still intact but had been wrenched free of the deck. The built-in cognitor and the Comm. link had been torn out of the ship's systems, so now a bulky Imperial Guard Vox. unit lay on the desk, crudely tied into _Terrible_'s net

Parol sighed, and picked up one of the many dataslates and glanced at the displayed message. _Yet another deployment order…_

The immense battlefleet was being fragmented. The elements of Battlefleet Pacificus as well as well nearly half of Battlefleet Gothic were being sent to Armageddon, where the intention seemed to be to trap the re-massing Ork fleet near the system between the new arrivals and the blockade fleets already deployed around the war-torn system.

Battlefleet Cadia, with it's immense experience with blockade duties, front-line area patrol and raiding forces, all in the highly hazardous zones around the Eye of Terror, was being deployed to the infamous Empire of Charadon. The Orkish inhabitants of the Empire were presently tearing into the hive fleets of Leviathan which had strangely diverted away from the more frail Imperial worlds into the Empire. Rapid strikes could keep both sides of the battle even by hitting weaker areas of the Orks or Tyranid, and whichever side finally ended up the victor would run right into Battlefleet Cadia and the forces already deployed from Ultima and Tempestus.

Parol dropped the dataslate and picked up another, ideally wondering just how small a force he would end up commanding by the time the dust had settled.


	14. The Emperor

**The Emperor**

_The Inquisitorial Fortress, Terra_

The crater that once made up the Imperial Palace was still glowing, but teams of men and servitors were already crawling over the wreckage, salvaging whatever could be found while massive machines crawled around the battered, but still intact spire of the Astropathic Choir.

The Emperor turned away from the window and his view of the ant-like mass of activity as yet another servo-skull drifted in clutching yet another data-slate. Sighing, the Emperor took the slate from the desiccated head's mechendrites and began to thumb through the report.

_Didn't I form the Administratum to read all this so I didn't have to?_ he idly wondered as the details of the re-conquest of a planet that tried to turn independent when the planet's sole Astropath died scrolled across the page. The report was one of hundreds of similar reports sketching out the vast upheaval across the Imperium in the aftermath to the defeat of Abaddon's Crusade.

A shift in the psychic atmosphere of the room caused the Emperor to glance up, just as the vox. ponder on his desk (an incredibly ancient antique belonging to the Paternoval Envoy of the Navigators up until 3rd Impact) chimed.

"Inquisitor Lord Korlan to see you, my Lord," the gravely voice of Captain Chesterman of the Adeptus Cusdodes said. The Emperor send a psychic signal in reply and waited for a few seconds. The door opened again and Korlan, the Inquisitorial Representative, genuflected his way into the room under the watchful gaze of the squad of Adaptus Cusdodes lining the room's walls. The Emperor fought against the urge to roll his eyes; a god is not supposed to show annoyance or boredom when his subjects worship him.

_There has _got_ to be a way to undo this,_ the Emperor thought as he waited through Korlan's long-winded praise. _It'll be hard enough getting things done as it is, getting things done when only the Adaptus Astartes aren't worshipping the ground at my feet will be virtually impossible._

"Your faith and attention to duty are well received, and bring you much credit," the Emperor finally said, hiding a wince at the almost physical pleasure Korlan's mind emitted. _Yes, I_ have _to fix this…_ "What is the status of the excavation of the palace remains?"

There was a shift in Korlan's mental aura as he shifted from worship to business, the main reason Korlan was the only High Lord the Emperor dealt with on a regular business; the others couldn't place their beliefs on a back-burner long enough to get any real work done in the Emperor's preasence.

"Fairly well, Master of Mankind. The Adaptus Mechanicus gangs have shored up the weakened areas of the Astropathic Choir's tower. Weather it can be repaired to allow the Choir to continue indefinably, or weather it needs replacing, or even if we _have_ the ability to replace it, depends on the final survey reports from the Magi commanding the efforts and an Inquisitor I've got monitoring the activity. Early reports seem hopeful though.

"As for the main excavation itself, reports are mixed. The area's still hot, from the side effects of that… person and the genariums and plasma conducts in the palace that blew during it's destruction. Only suited tech-priests and armored servitors have the endurance to properly search the area without injury, but they have found a few artifacts and machines that survived the blast."

"And the 'special' objective," the Emperor asked.

"An Inquisitorial team has begun searching the area in question, my Lord. Fortunately, the area in question was deep in the palace's dungeons underneath the palace gardens and seems to be mostly intact. They haven't found your private labs, nor the Webway gate inside yet, but Inquisitor General Mandriene is confident that it is only a matter of time."


	15. The Tau

**The Tau**

The battered _Or'es Gharial For'tani_ finally dropped from the Warp in a massive discharge of energy, the battered remnants of the Tau flotilla following in a series of lurches very uncharacteristic of the well trained and disciplined Air caste. A trio of Gue'la light cruisers followed, in an almost disdainfully smooth maneuver.

Shas'Ui T'au Kais glanced up at one of the screens, linking to a sealed off chamber of the _Or'es Gharial For'tani_, guarded by a large number of nervous Gue'la soldiers, where a psychic Navigator on loan from the Imperium finally slumped back against a crude seat thrown together by the Earth caste engineers in something like relief.

"We have arrived at your 'Empire' Xenos," the Navigator stated flatly, pulling a bandana-like object over his head and the peculiar third eye that had the Earth caste involved with the bio-sciences arguing fervently about the use of the Navigators in warp-travel. "As per our agreement, you will allow myself, my guards and my other brethren transit to the accompanying cruisers so we can leave this… Empire."

"We had intended to invite you and your people to a calibration in honor of our victory and alliance," Por'el Vash'ya Kor'tar replied smoothly.

"I… thank you for your kind offer," the Navigator said, his face twisted into a distaste that did not match his diplomatic words. "I and the other men of the Imperium are… required elsewhere in the Imperium. I must regretfully decline your offer."

"Of course," Por'el Vash'ya Kor'tar replied nodding in a very gue'la way, "I'm sure the captain will provide some Orca dropships for your team." As the screen switched to an external view of the fleet accompanying the _Or'es Gharial For'tani_, Kais closed his eyes and let a slight hint of a smile play around his lips.

It wasn't the fact that he was finally back in the Empire, although that certainly helped. It was the fact that, aside from the slight hum and scream of the background Warp, his mind was completely, serenely, silent.


	16. The Pilots

**The Pilots**

The Imperium is vast, controlling a million worlds spread across the galaxy. To most of the Imperium the bloody battles fought, even the wrath of the Abaddon as he cut his way towards Terra, are irrelevent, a known but, aside from increases in Imperial Guard drafting and the disappearance of ships of the Imperial Navy, distant event.

One such world was Alagonius IV within the Segmentum Pacificus. A pleasant world by the standards of the Imperium; green and forested with a thriving ecosystem, a strong presence of the Adaptus Mechanicus leading to a fairly advanced level of technology, Alagonius IV had neither the teeming populations and pollution of hive worlds like Armageddon, or the primitiveness of Agri worlds like Thorlian Secondus. It had remained almost completely untouched by the Segmentum spanning conflict.

Until now.

Space above the planet twisted. With a flicker of unearthly energies, gone before the auspexes of the local stations even registered their presence, a pair of battered, twisted objects spat out from the Warp and plummeted to the planet below. The atmosphere roared in protest as the two objects slammed through the various atmospheric layers, and then, impossibly, began to slow.

With a thud of scattered sand, the two twisted cylinders half embedded themselves in the 30 mile long beach known locally as 'the Emperor's Piece'. Battered electronics gave out one last spark of life, blowing the emergency charges built into the entry plugs' hatches. Even as the hatches flew out onto the near purple sea, an orangey-red liquid poured out onto the sand, flowed into the dents in the sand and began to congeal.

Shinji woke slowly, to the kind of piece that you get when the mind is not yet working fully, and the only thing you can really remember is the warm haze of awakening.

This, of course, doesn't last long.

"Gah!" Shinji gasped as several months of memories took the opportunity to leap into the fore brain. _What… what happe…_ Shinji paused for a second. _Why does it sometimes seem like my life is like a long series of clichés?_ Shinji hesitated, before shaking his head. _Okay, I was on that… 'hell planet', I destroyed the last Chaos Eva, something… _someone, _forced me and Asuka to touch our Evas' core together…. And then I wake up…here…_

Shinji idly picked up a handful of sand and let it drift through his fingers. So… a beach? He hesitated, _Please don't be red, please don't be red_, before looking up towards the sound of waves. He was lying on a white beach, leading down to a purple sea.

Shinji let his attention drift from the strange sea to the rest of the surrounding area. He quickly spotted the tree other people on the beach. Two of them were wearing red plug suits, while the third was wearing a white version similar to Rei's.

Shinji frowned, _she looks very famil…_

Yui Ikari twisted over in her sleep, allowing the hair to fall away from her face.

"MOM!"

It would be several decades before the Imperium finally got around to re-establishing contact with Alagonius IV. Not that the period of isolation was bad for the planet, if anything it had improved during its isolation. It rapidly became famous for the quality of the local Adaptus Mechanicus augmentatics technology and Machine-Spirit capabilities.

That, however, is not my story to tell.


End file.
